rebeccmeister | Happenings at the Office [plants, animals]

I repotted the purple passion plant and the prayer plant so they're ready for their glam shot:

Also pictured is a philodendron, to round out this photo of plants whose names begin with the letter "P." These clash mightily with the red poinsettia.

Here's my new Lithiops/succulent protection system:

And an update on the Little Jade that Could:

Looking good, little jade, looking good.

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Meanwhile, in other lab/office news, last week was all a flurry because I'm always needing to order lab supplies and animals far enough in advance for them to arrive for lab, factoring in such things as, "We only collect and ship our cow's blood on Wednesdays," "This vendor doesn't accept tax-exempt forms," "This vendor has a minimum order amount of $70," and the occasional winter ice storm.

Anyway, the blood for next Tuesday's lab *did* show up, hopefully not too early, but there were questions about the arrival prospects for the horseshoe crabs, also for lab. We'll be comparing the oxygen saturation curves for the respiratory pigments in Limululs blood as compared to bovine blood (hemocyanin vs. hemoglobin).

Last year, I ordered medium horseshoe crabs. Here's our sole remaining survivor from last year. I tried to include my hand for a sense of scale, but I'm afraid with the angle you can't really tell; it's about the size of a small dinner plate:

So I thought, "Ehh, I probably don't need medium horseshoe crabs. I can probably get away with small ones instead."

So here's what showed up today:

I really don't think I can safely bleed these little cuties at this size.

So now they're in the saltwater flow-through tank, and if we've actually managed to improve/perfect our husbandry methods, maybe in another year or two they'll be big enough for lab. The old survivor is the longest we've kept one alive here so far, and we've just made a couple critical changes to the flow-through tank that should be helpful. So we'll see.

So, new lab plan: oxygen binding curves for cow blood only. Sad trombone, because getting to do both pigment types was way more interesting.