Something Gross: Wa-HOO!

The gross item promised to Archie was a little purchase I made at the dissection booth at the homeschool convention.  They had some really neat things available for take home dissection fun:  worms, crawfish, crickets (gigantic, mutant icky black ones!) sharks, fetal pigs and I believe a cow's heart as well.  We're not yet set up for that extensive of a dissection project.  No scalpel or trays with the rubber bottoms, nor pins to hold open the 'cavity'.  We'll work on getting set up for dissection in the next couple of years, or if there is a strong interest sooner.   A 'schoolish' purchase I'd love to make first is a really good microscope, but I need to do some research on that.  

The gross item I purchased for Archie was a couple of owl pellets.  Owl pellets are a regurgitation substance from owls (commonly found under trees they inhabit) which consist of fur and bones and other 'undigestables' from the animals the owl eats.  The pellets were wrapped in foil, oblong in shape--a bit like an egg-shaped golf ball.  Archie quickly decided that he'd dislike being an owl if he had to hack up something like that every day!

We couldn't figure out how to get into it at first.  We tried gently stabbing it with a chop stick, but started hearing popping, like the sound of cracking bones.  Finally we just grabbed it with both hands and broke it in half.  The thing was a huge mass of fur and bones!  Once I got it started, Archie was ready to take over.  

I was able to be 'off duty' the whole afternoon because he was so busy with the pellet.  He looked online at various mammal skeletons to try to figure out what he was dealing with.  He tried reconstructing part of a skeleton, but there was so much stuff in there, it was difficult to tell what he was dealing with.  He found three skulls.  One was most definitely a mousy-type or moley-type rodent due to the prominent front teeth.  The other two skulls were difficult to tell.  A few bones were rather mysterious at first, and after some online research, Archie figured out that they were the wing bones of a bat.  The rapid way the bats in our backyard dart around, I can only imagine how difficult or lucky an owl would have to be to catch one! Archie enjoyed actually experiencing how ball and socket joints work together (and how tiny they were).  

There was grey fur.  Lots and lots and lots of grey fur.  The whole golf-ball-egg was held together by the tons of fur that the pellet consisted of.  Our kitchen table was slap full of bones and fur.  

Every so often, while I was doing my own thing that afternoon, I'd hear "WOW!!!  Look at THIS!!!  This is AWESOME!!".  It was definitely a good school day!

One of the skulls close up.  This is not the rat-toothed one.  

Here is Archie's attempt at skeleton reconstruction.

We have one more pellet to examine, which we will save for a rainy day.  It will be exciting to see what's in that one!