Zoology 101

One of the joys of home schooling is knowing exactly what your kids are studying and learning it all right along with them. Well, sometimes that entails doing some not so nice experiments in science. My youngest 3 are doing a zoology study for science. Their current chapter was on rodents and what a better way to study rodents than to look at their skeletons! How can you do that at home.... well you dissect owl pellets of course! Now, let me clarify that owl pellets are not the owls poop, they are the owl's vomit! The owl swallows their prey and after the stomach acid takes what it needs it turns the bones and fur into a nice pellet and the owl spits it up! Us wacky home schoolers then buy these pellets to dissect and check out what was eaten! YUCK! That is all I have to say (actually I said throughout the whole process).

When I unwrapped the pellet we all just about gagged, it really looks like a big ol' turd! We then started to pick it apart (we had 3 of them to dig through) with tweezers and tooth picks. At first no one wanted to touch it with their fingers, but it is just about impossible to dig out the bones without doing so.



As long as you did not think about what you were actually tearing apart it was not so bad, but the minute I tore some fur (and it actually is still soft and furry) it is hard not to think of the creature before it was in this state! For about 30 minutes all the kids dug in, even my 4 year old!


After a while they lost interest and went to play (after washing their hands in bleach!), but my 10 y.o. stayed until she could lay out all the bones and reconstruct the creature. My son eventually came back and made his too. There was even teeth still in the skull bones!


We discovered our owls ate rodents, and a shrew. There was even a baby rodent in one. The bones were so small! The most disgusting thing we found was a tail! It was a great way to end our study of rodents. We really got a good laugh over it all and was quite the experience.