“Mrs. Richardson bought the stock supply of fruit flies. Each one had a different mutation, and we had to look at all the different variations under the microscope. Then, we chose which mutation we wanted to study, and we put a number of them in our own new vials of fruit flies. We’re making new generations from the mutation we picked. They’re like our grandbabies. We’re separating the females from the males to make sure they’re virgin females. Once we isolate them, we’ll cross them with another [batch] of fruit flies. We’re mating them with other fruit flies. But it’s kind of confusing; I don’t even know exactly what we’re doing. We’re just going with it. There was bacteria in the first vial we had, so we threw that one away. But the new one’s looking really good, so that’s good. There is a lot of larva. There’s like thirteen of them. It was really sad when the first vial got bacteria in them; all of them died. It was really gross and slimy. Well, actually, we tried to salvage some of them. We originally had six flies in that one, and then four of them died. We tried to save the two that were left. There was a larvae that hatched in the bacteria-infested vial this morning, but because there weren’t any adults left, Mrs. Richardson just told us to throw that one away. Apparently, according to Kellie, the hatched ones were really cute. So it was sad that we had to let it go.”

(Senior)