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surrounded by hundreds of others. The large red bulbous
eyes stared at him, scanning for any signs of life. The
Mediterranean fruit fly looks basically like a large bumblebee. The
only difference is that it has red eyes, a red and orange striped
abdomen, much less “fur” on its black spotted thorax, and like all
flies no conspicuous antennae structures on its forehead. After
another several seconds of staring at the creature Mike turns and
walks out of the lab.
     
    Worm contamination near Bakersfield. Hmmm,
interesting. Have we ever had a scenario like this before? Cause if
we did, I don’t remember it. Mike keeps going over all the
information that the report contained and that John mentioned to
him. It looks like this might be another long day. At the rate
this day started, I’m not going to be home before 7:00pm at the
earliest. Coming back into his office and falling into the
chair, Mike reopens his e-mail window. Mail from USDA, several
message from the Farm Service Agency (FSA) on farm conditions and
quality in the region, and an inquiry from the Agricultural
Research Service on the status of a forest conservation program
intended to protect the Giant Sequoias from invasive insect
species. That shouldn’t be here, I haven’t been working on that
project in months. Forwarding a copy of that last e-mail to
John, Mike turns to the task at hand. Exiting the building from the
left side rear door, he walks across a small parking lot to a
parked Dodge Sprinter van that the office uses for what are
jokingly referred to as “excursions”- really field work.
     
    Mike walks around the van and unlocks the back door.
Pulling the door open he reveals the assortment of field equipment
that is usually kept in the vehicle. Plastic carry-kits and boxes
full of hygrometers, TDS testers, water samplers, thermometers, pH
indicators, temperature and oxygen tracer meters, and a mobile
dissection kit are all amongst the tools typically found in the
van’s cargo hold. We need some quarantine containers for getting
samples back. Field radios? None? We should get some of those as
well. Closing the doors and heading back into the building Mike
sees Mark comes out of the other side’s rear exit door carrying two
boxes. He walks up to the van, puts the boxes on the ground, and
starts opening the van’s doors. Mike goes in through the same door
he came out of and walks down the hallway to his A-3 office. Making
a right, he heads to Storage Room 2. Taking a key chain out of his
jeans pocket, Mike flips through the oftentimes confusing set of
keys until he finds the large one with 2 small ridges. Opening the
door he enters and begins looking through the racks to find what he
is looking for. Containers, quarantine containers. . . we always
kept them on the second shelf! Grabbing three, a large one, and
two smaller sized ones, Mike leaves the storage room and closes the
door behind him.
     
    Taking the boxes outside the office building, he
leaves them on the ground. He then goes in and nearly bumps into
Laurie who is also walking down the hallway with a lap-top in her
hands. “Woah! Haha sorry. Good thinking, almost forgot- We’ll
definitely need that!”, exclaims Mike on seeing her. “Bet you would
forget”. Laurie glides past him and goes out the door. Mike goes
back to grab some walkie-talkies from the storage. Now remembering
which is the key for the storage room, the process goes much
quicker than before. He then walks back out with four compact
walkie-talkies and heads out for the van. Laurie, coming back by
now, see him pass again. “I’ll get those containers”. “Thanks!” Man, that definitely helps a little. Within another three
minutes everything that they will need for the field work is in the
van, and Mike is ready to take off.
     
    After going to the bathroom and taking several empty
file folders from his desk Mike heads out to the van at exactly
8:43am. Laurie is already by the van waiting. “You have
everything?”