When I was young, snow days were terribly exciting. Now that I work,  they’re pretty much non-existent, but today the five inches or so that we’ve gotten today have caused some disappointment.

An upcoming episode of InsectaPod Cast will focus on invasive species. We interviewed MSU prof. Anthony Cognato a few weeks ago, but after the interview knew we wanted something more than just an “in the office” question and answer session. Anthony got us in touch with a colleague who does port inspections in Detroit, looking for exotic bugs in the dunnage coming off cargo vessels. It turned out we would be able to accompany him on a port inspection, but he hooked us up with the Dept. of Homeland Security at Detroit Metro Airport. Today was the day Anna and i were going to go down there and speak with some homeland security guys about insects they’ve intercepted and things like that. But then it snowed hard, and I’m in my windowless office instead.

There were two things about this interview that I was super excited about. The first was the likelihood that these guys will have an actual “line-of-fire” invasive species story we can record. I don’t know what exactly to expect, but our contact told Anna finding exotic insects on planes isn’t uncommon, and just hearing about some action like that will really make for some compelling podcast audio. The second thing was the general airport ambience. We all know there’s lots of airport noise, it’s loud, and it’s distinctive. That means it’ll be easy to record and really help set the scene of the podcast within the airport.

Fortunately, we were able to reschedule the whole thing a few weeks down the line, so I’ll still be able to get those sounds. I think that episode promises to be a good one.