The ants came marching..

[hnpcc]

The ants have reappeared, apparently under the impression that it's spring.

They're everywhere in the house (I'm still failing to see what could possibly be edible in my cross-stitch) and - yet again - they're in the lab.

Specifically they're eating my 6X stop solution.

I have no idea why they'd want my 6X stop solution. It's not exactly the first thing that springs to mind when you think of "food", even for insects. For starters it's deep blue. For seconds it's really quite sticky - thanks to the glycerol, which is probably what they're after. I still don't think bromophenol blue's going to do them much good though. After rescuing several ants that had either fallen in or were stuck (no, I don't want extra protein in my gels, thanks for asking) I ended up parafilming the bijou bottle to stop them getting in. Then I discovered they'd managed to find a way into my carefully made up plant media - one jar had a tiny, tiny crack in the lid which I hadn't noticed when I was making up the stocks. By the time I came in the next morning the jar was a black seething mass of hungry ants.

I autoclaved the lot of them.

Just incidentally, the lab's meant to be a PC2 containment area. One of the things about PC2 is that there's not supposed to be any insects around and we're supposed to contain GMOs. Given my last experience with the lab ants I don't think we're doing too well on that front.

Still, could be worse. And will be. The Uni's decided they have to crack down on the PC2 front, which means we're being inspected and told what to improve. We have to take our lab coats off leaving PC2 areas and put them on when we enter. All this would be much easier were it not for the fact that the building was built in the 60s, and is not designed around PC2 regulations. The corridors, for example, are not PC2. All the labs are. For me to photograph an ethidium gel I'm now supposed to put the gel in a box, seal it, take off my gloves and coat, carry it through the lab doors, through the stairwell doors, down a flight of stairs, in through another set of doors and finally into the darkroom, magically find another coat and gloves, take the photo, take off the used gloves and the coat, carry the gel and the used gloves (no discards in the darkroom!) back up to the lab, put on a coat and gloves and then discard the gel and the previous set of gloves.

Leaving aside the likelihood of me carrying a gel containing a known strong carcinogen without gloves on even in a box (um, no - EtBr ends up everywhere) you can see how this coats on/off business is going to get tricky.

Fortunately they're building us a new building. Which we can move to in 2005ish. Until then, we're arguing with the biosafety committee.

And very, very carefully not mentioning the ants.

Comments

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

Ants: oh my God. Is there any way of getting a mixture of 6x stop solution and something that is dangerous to ants and leaving that sitting out, to attract them and thus get rid of them?

[shnetti.livejournal.com]

If the ants think it's spring, they have a wattle mentality (being as how trees are supposed to flower in the spring, except that wattle flowers in winter). Which means I can't make up my mind whether to hate wattle for giving me false hopes of spring, or to love wattle for giving me a taste of spring in the nasty winter. And I'd like to put cuttings in water in the flat except for the worry of triggering Ant's hayfever. (My Ant with a capital A, I mean, not lowercase ants, about whose potential hayfever I couldn't give a lowercase rat's.)

My theory about why your ants are after your cross-stitch has nothing to do with food -- I can see how cross-stitches to ants might just look like one big ant orgy, so they're just horny little beasts.

Ants in the lab are another matter -- I never came across those, but it does give a nicely literal take to "bugs in the lab" (yes I know neither ants nor bacteria are technically Hemiptera, but who's counting). A LOL for autoclaving the ants, too. I imagine them quite dead and each one wearing a nice little black-striped piece of tape.

And what a memory, PC2 conditions. We too had "unclean" corridors, but just did the best we could (mostly) in the designated areas. It's only the stress of Honours deadlines that makes one pick up one's agarose gel out of the EtBr without putting gloves on first (you didn't hear that from me). I don't have any cancers on my fingers yet -- it's probably a race between getting those and getting ones on my feet from where I dripped acrylamide on them (we weren't supposed to wear sandals in the lab either of course so I don't know where you got the idea that I did) during marathon sequencing-gel-pouring sessions. And I have to say it's a good thing there are no kids in the future, after I worked for several days at a fume hood underneath which was stored an unshielded bottle of P32 waste (took a while to work out why my badge reading was so high that month -- turns out the bottle was left there by a thankfully-dropped-out-soon-after Honours student who was of the mistaken belief that her radiation badge *shielded* her from doses rather than just measuring exposure...my, my).

Gads, those were the good old days. Or at least the old days.

One day, I must come visit your lab. Make sure all the ants are gone first though, please (you must have cupboards of glucose and tetraborate just lying around for the taking -- much tastier than stop solution, I'm sure!).

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

turns out the bottle was left there by a thankfully-dropped-out-soon-after Honours student who was of the mistaken belief that her radiation badge *shielded* her from doses rather than just measuring exposure...my, my

A common misconception.

As is the one that wearing lab coats protects you from EVERYTHING.

[shnetti.livejournal.com]

Hehe, don't we know it.

Actually I'd be happy with a coat that could protect us from the *most* dangerous lab equipment, i.e. Honours students. (And possibly ants.)