Claraism

This will forever be my favourite zoology lab moment. (We're not even halfway through the term yet, but this will be hard to beat... you'll see.) Every week, we have an oral lab quiz. This is what happened today, when I drew my question out of the bucket:

Question:
1. Name the class of this organism. (Snake)
2. Indicate the dermal layer of the skin.

The first question was easy. "Reptilia," I told the TA. "Very good," he replied.
Then he put down a slide in front of me, and I got to work setting it up in the microscope. I looked down through the lens, into the field in front of me, which was full of squiggly black lines. We had been studying red specimens, but I was unphased because we learned in histology that one should never be intimidated by colour of a stain.
I was confused though because I wasn't really sure what snake dermis looked like. I had just been focusing on the overlapping scales, which I thought I could identify currently, but they weren't really as jagged as I remembered. So I put the needle over the dark structure in the middle and tried to sound confident when I told the TA to look.
He peers into the lenses... looks back up with a puzzled face, and then down at the stage...
"DUDE, YOU'RE LOOKING AT GLUE."
(insert a moment for me to process what he just said)
He goes on: "Did you wonder why it's black and not red??"
Clara: "...Man, that explains so much."

Turns out I had focused the microscope on the glue that holds the slide cover in place. Hahahahhhahhhh.... at least I got to fix up the microscope and answered the question right in the end.