This summer, I’ve been working as an animal technician. It’s a part time position that was hastily thrown together to buffer the effects of a sudden resignation, meaning my whole job takes place in the area with highest priority, but minimum required qualification – the dishroom. I don’t see any of the lab’s mice and rats during my shift, but I do see the hundreds of dirty cages, feed boxes, and water bottles that are shuttled over to me each day. It’s probably a good thing, as I still haven’t fully decided on my personal boundaries regarding animal experimentation. But I’ll get into that another time.
My two main coworkers are eight foot tall, loud, yellow robotic arms. On one side of the dishroom (the “dirty” side), I feed stacks of dirty cages onto a conveyor belt. The robotic arm grabs each cage, dumps its contents into a grinder, and places it onto a rack. I push that rack through the industrial washer, then give it to robot #2, who neatly takes each cage and fills it with fresh bedding. The conveyor sends them in stacks back to me. It’s a pretty simple process, except that the robots are frustratingly finicky, and will come to a squealing halt every few minutes for some reason or another. I spend a great deal of time running between the dirty and clean side (changing my shoes and gloves along the way), hoping to placate them. It’s worth mentioning too that the robots are controlled from a digital panel that is entirely in Swedish, and while I might have said that I can follow the language well enough in my interview for this job…I really don’t have much to show for my year living in Sverige.
And so, weirdly enough, I’ve found my experience with these robots to be very similar to my work with animals, especially the sheep and goats of Clover Brooke Farm. When there is a problem, they would try to tell me what’s wrong – robots have red lights that flash or alarms that sound, whereas a goat may act aloof, stop eating, or refuse to stand. I’m not exactly fluent in their way of communicating, so I have to troubleshoot. Did a cage fall off the belt? (Do they have a limp?) No, everything looks fine there. Maybe there’s something caught in the arm? (Are they anemic?) Doesn’t look like it, but I’ll clean off the suction cups just to be sure. Oh look, the cage it’s supposed to pick up is piled high with bedding, maybe that is interfering with the arm’s function. (Their hay feeder is stuffed tighter than usual, maybe they can’t reach their food.) I’ll clear that out and try again – there we go.
It took some fussy robots for me to realize that working with animals in a farm setting, where diagnosis is tricky and a vet is expensive, actually taught me a great deal about problem solving in general. I guess you’ll never know how much of an impact an experience had on you until you’re patting the side of a robotic arm and telling it not to worry.
Next week is my last week with the robots, then it’s time to enjoy the final weeks of summer before I begin my thesis work!
– Ruth