Ooooh, that smell ...

I was working at the lab late last night (I prefer to go in later in the day for many reasons - I can listen to my talk radio without bothering anybody, and I can turn the thermostat down from 78 so that I don't bake myself alive, among others.) Anyway, my eyes beheld an eerie sight, when the monster from his slab began to rise - just kidding. Actually, my nose besmelled a disgusting smell, which was coming from the back of the lab where the autoclaves live. [Billie Nye the Science Girl] An autoclave is like a giant pressure cooker. The pressure increases to 15 psi, which allows the temperature to reach 121C, high enough to brutally murder spore-forming bacteria. [/BNtSG]

It turned out that someone had used the autoclave to kill some of our used cultures, and the autoclave bag containing the petri dishes burst, leaking ooze everywhere. Fortunately, the bag was sitting in a metal bucket. Unfortunately, the hole in the bag was big enough that the ooze escaped the bucket and ended up in the bottom of the autoclave. Also unfortunately, the ooze contained not only a bazillion dead critters, but agar, which solidifies when it cools. So, when I tried to drain the autoclave, I only got a sad little trickle out of the tubing, since everything else was trapped behind the solidified blob of bleeecccch.

I went ahead and sterilized what I needed to sterilize, then I ran the autoclave again empty, and immediately drained it - spewing forth hot, liquified ooze. Nice.

It still didn't win the award for Most Digusting Autoclave Concoction, though - that belongs to the people who used to use the autoclave on campus to kill their used fruit flies. Remember children, autoclaved fruit flies smell really, really horrid. Be kind and use ether instead.

It's a good thing that working in the lab has burnt out some of my olefactory receptors. Seriously, I think it's a survival mechanism. These days, I can't tell when a baby has a poopie diaper to save my life. That may present a problem some day.