to catch a 'diller

I was coming home from lab the other night...it was pretty late I caught the last midnight bus leaving campus and I was walking to my apartment when I heard a little rustling sound in the leaves. I froze. And I looked around....and then I saw it. An armadillo!!! My first one since coming to Texas. I have only seen them dead on the sides of the roads (so sad), and not a live snortling little fellow rustling about for food. Fortunately, I had gotten my camera back from Nikki that day (she borrowed it to take some before pics of her mom's wedding dress before she has it restored) so I got a pic of him! I think he is cute. His head it buried under some leaves...he was probably sniffing around for acorns, or ants? I don't know what they eat. Well I proceeded to walk VERY QUIETLY down the stairs to my apt so that I could get a closer shot of him (at this point i was standing above him on the walkway), when I was about halfway down the stairs he froze and stood up on his back legs and was sniffing the air. He knew I was there and darted off before I could get a better pic. He was so cute though when he was standing up.
I am jealous of Ryan. He always has cool looking compounds. And admittedly, these pics aren't as cool as the ones Lisa takes of their purple and green columns, but I think red is pretty cool. And, the compound that he isolated was pink (much to his dismay). Mine are always brown, yellow or clear. =( Here is a pic of his red column from last week, it looks kinda orangey in the picture but it was very red. Something I have not seen before. What is a column? A column: you pass your crude mixture through some sort of material (here, it is silica gel) and you can separate the compounds in that mixture based on some sort of property (we usually can do so based on their polarity. more polar compounds tend to "stick" to the column, while less polar run off. As you increase the polarity of the solvent running through the column, your desired compound will come off. And, you collect everything in test tubes then collect only the fractions that have your compound in it.)


Otay, that's it for now. I was starting this post last week but then something happened and I didn't have time to write it all over/finish it. I'll update about Banana's wedding soon. I need to get some pics off the camera. fun fun!