I was suddenly reminded today, by some random Act of Probability, of one of the more unusual perils of working in a World-Class Research University.

The lab phone rang today and I picked it up, expecting a call from one of our collaborators from across campus. To my shock and horror, a woman in an incredibly tender and bereaved voice promptly proceeded to narrate the tragic life story of her pet hound. She went on and on about how her dog had died of colon cancer and she had thought that she would give the corpse to the University since the veterinarian had mentioned how unusual certain lesions around the anus were and that he had never seen anything quite like it.

I was understandably quite flummoxed1 but felt the least I could do was to provide them the number to the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Footnotes
  1. I work in a computational chemistry lab. We don’t usually work with cadavers↩