On monday several of my labmates and our advisor went on a trip to the New York State Museum in Albany NY. Mostly we went there to pick up some bees for our lab’s bee databasing project, but I also wanted to look at their Acronicta specimens and talk to the entomology curators at the museum. It was a quick visit, but very helpful and a lot of fun.

On the way back, our advisor started craning his neck to see the plants on the side of the highway as we were driving. This wouldn’t be so bad, if he wasn’t the one driving. He thought he caught a glimpse of a tree he really needed to feed some of his caterpillars.

So there we were, crawling along in the slow lane, looking for a tree. We pulled over into the breakdown lane once, but there was no tree.

Finally we did stop near the right tree, and he hopped right out with his clippers (always handy, of course) to grab a branch.

To us this seemed fairly normal. Though I wonder what the people in the passing cars thought!