My beautiful Caribbean Scolopendra will be moving to Lansing next week. I'm going to miss Nigel. From the day in November of 2001 when he (?) arrived in Kalamazoo trapped under the cellophane of a gift basket sent from St. Lucia, he's been my constant companion in the lab. He's been the only witness to many things that are normally the sole purview of the hypothetical fly on the wall; I wonder how violently his antennae must have quivered from the vibrations the afternoon that I hurled a manuscript of my dissertation against the ceiling. I doubt that he processed much of what was going on, though. To his little chilopod brain, it probably seemed like the rustling of a pinkie mouse in a nearby nest.

I couldn't have picked a better lab-mate. (No offense intended, Eric; I think you're a great guy too!) Whatever I have muttered to myself in that room went no further; Nigel keeps my secrets. And, for the price of an occasional cricket, I've enjoyed the visits of numerous classfuls of undergrads brought to the lab by my fellow TAs so that they could visit my awesome Antillean hunting machine. But now I'm only sporadically present, and Dave has asked that Nigel be relocated, since space is short and caregivers are limited. So, it'll be off to a bug zoo for Nigel, as well as for my remaining millipedes (which, as I've mentioned before, don't seem to thrive in my home).

("Hey, I give up. What's seven inches long and has venomous fangs and 42 legs?")