Welcome to my nerdy world. When people meet me and learn about my abnormal love for the ‘creepy-crawly’ they often ask what it is that turns a girl like me into such an entomophiliac. Maybe you are one of the few people who could care less (if so, don’t bother reading the next couple sentences). I think there a couple of factors that are to blame for my vocaional choice:

1. Ever since I can remember, I always knew I wanted to be a biologist. It didn’t matter what aspect of biology, I’m easily entertained by the great outdoors. And since the tv is the greatest babysitter a kid can have, shows like Wild America and other Nat’l Geographic programs helped glorify the life of a biologist. There is an aspect of biology I always knew I could never do…and that was/is with anything under the cellular level. My brain so does not like thinking about things that small.
2. Growing up in the windy city…there are only so many kinds of living creatures that grace your presence, the most common being cockroaches and pigeons. Cockroaches still give me the willies, yet I am strangely fascinated by them. The only thing pigeons are good for is chasing, trust me.
3. It wasn’t until college that I really solidified the choice to make insects my (hopefully life-long) career, and that decision was partially based on the fact that there are SO many (Im bound to find an uexplored niche) and most people don’t care what kind of things you do to insects when studying them. I can collect them, I can pin them, I can inject them with different drugs and see how it affects them…and all without a permit or angry protests from PETA.

So thats how I got my start with bugs. Just a warning…I am no tech-savvy kind of person, so this site may have a slow start until I get the hang of things.

Stay tuned.