Still Alive & Kicking

So, here's the story of how a poor caterpillar accidentally came to FA lab.

One fine day, this poor fella fell on the wrong person at the wrong time. It fell on the shirt of a technician specialist in my lab and followed him back to the lab. When he found it, he felt disgusted and threw it into the the dustbin.

But the lab is full of sympathetic girls and women. They decided to pick it up from the dustbin, and kept inside a glass bottle.

Knowing our nature of job... We immediately "inspected" the caterpillar under the microscope! I got to tell you, it was rather interesting!!! Hahaha... But I told my friend, it is only cute when it's in the bottle. I don't want to have any contact with it.

I tried to feed it with leaves but it refused to eat any of them. My colleague thought it was too stressed out because of the way we handled it. I thought it wouldn't make it through the day and I will have an extra SEM specimen. I even googled "How to SEM insects" when I got home.

The next day, the first thing I looked for in the lab, is this poor fella. To my surprise, my operator told me it's still alive!! And it turned into a cocoon!!

A cocoon in my lab! How cool was that?!

Then suddenly, I have a whole new thing to do with this caterpillar. Instead of SEM it. I decided to keep it alive until the end of metamorphosis.

So, I gave it a big and comfortable house.
Like this :)

I hope it hasn't turned into a butterfly or moth yet, because we haven't been around for two days for weekend. Hope it's still in a cocoon and we will have the chance to witness it's transformation!

We kept a caterpillar in the lab as pet!

How cool is that! :)