the most disgusting thing just happened to me...

ok, i am at work right now (in the herbarium). the grossest thing just happened to me, and i seriously almost threw up. i had to take a break to write about it because it was that gross.

so, today we got about 800+ plant specimens in on exchange from the New York Botanical Garden. i was like oo yay, because they owe our herbarium over 22,000 plant specimens in exchanges. so i started processing them, opened all the boxes, did the paperwork, etc. the next step is for me to put the plants on mounting paper so then they can be glued, filed, etc.

so ive gone through about 50 specimens, everything seems normal and fine. then i open the next paper up to get the next plant, and THERE. WERE. BUGS. at first i thought, maybe thats some sort of weird fruit that is squished funny and ive never seen it before. but i didnt want to get too close. so i asked my friend/coworker to come look. she took one look and said "ew...those are definitely bugs."

i about threw up. i was like oh no, did bugs get in the box and lay eggs and there will be tons of bugs hatching in our herbarium? did they smoosh the bugs when they pressed the plant and not realize? i was like ewww i am not touching that. so i call my boss in to look at it. he said "lets go across the way to the bug place", because across the building from the herbarium is the entemology place, or whatever bugs are called. so we walked over to have them identify it.

turns out its cicadas. no eggs or anything, just got their shells smooshed along with the plant and i guess whoever collected the plant is either an idiot or was trying to be funny. so what do i have to do about this? i have to go back, and sit down with tweezers and get all the bugs off the plant. there were a lot, and all squished up in the plant and stuff. it was so disgusting, especially when i would pull on a bug with tweezers and it would be partially stuck and ewwwwwwwww......

this was what was left in the trash can when i was done

gross, huh? i should totally be featured in dirty jobs. ok, maybe not, but it was still absolutely disgusting. i still feel queesy. oh wait, thats my ulcers...

the end.