I am staying in New York with a friend who works at Rockefeller University,
a graduate school for medical/biological research.  Recently, I had some
bumblebees specimens sentto my friend's office address.  They didn't come,
and I was getting worried, until yesterday, when my friend said, yes,
they got here today.  He said that he had been at his desk when the lab
secretary came in.  She had gotten a call from the mail room people who
begged her,"Oh my God, there's a box of dead insects here for you!  Please,
please come get it right away - ugh!!"  My friend explained to the secretary
that it was just a few boxes of nice, friendly bumblebees on pins ("they're
<stuffed>" he explained).  She went down and got the box.  The mail room
people, of course, had seen that little sticker 'Dead Insects for Scientific
Study - Of No Commercial Value', and had thought that the box was, you know,
FILLED with dead insects.  Centipedes! Crickets! Spiders! Roaches!  Who knows!
 
Considering that the halls of Rockefeller are traversed every day by workers
casually carrying styrofoam boxes of poisonous or perishable medical items,
steaming with dry ice, while they chat and drink coffee, I thought this was
pretty funny.  I mean, human body parts are one thing, but <<dead insects>>
are clearly another!
My friend said it would have been better if the box had said, "Contains
50,000 cockroach eggs - deliver by [date scratched out] - any delay may
cause leakage."
 
Sigh.
 
<(-)
 
!
 
Liz Day
presently in New York City, USA
receiving mail at [log in to unmask]
(Please note my new email address. The gluon one is defunct.)