Sunday, June 26, 2011

Birthday Gift from Dad

Here's what the Common Household Husband gave to our Youngest Daughter for her birthday.   Just what every 12-year-old girl wants.


He found this squished bug in his lab, preserved it and fixed it on a slide.   When she received it, she exclaimed, “Now I can see what animal life REALLY looks like!”  (As if she had never seen any animals before.)

We looked at it in the microscope which resides in our guest bedroom (it’s just what every guest bedroom needs).  She looked, but was grossed out at first, screamed, and jumped away.  She tried to look again, but had to cover her eyes.

After a while she was brave enough to look, but only if she gripped my arm.

My son tried taking a photo of it by just putting the camera up to the microscope viewer.  It’s not too bad a photo, considering the equipment he was working with.  I think it shows the part where one of the legs meets the body.


Looking at other parts of the bug, we could see each segmentation in the antenna.  The segments in the antenna were of uniform size, but the leg segments were different sizes. We could see the tiny hairs (spikes?) all along the legs, and the claw-like things at the end of the legs.  I thought it was quite interesting.  We were not able to determine what species of bug it was.

But my main point is that around here you never know what you might receive as a birthday gift.  

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