Owl pellets

If you have a weak belly, you might want to skip this post and photos.  Not sure if you are familiar with what owl pellets are, but at first I thought owl pellets were owl poop.  But no, it's actually pellets of what the owls regurgitate.  Ya, after eating their meals whole, the owls regurgitate all the "stuff" that it can't digest - such as bones and fur. Eeewww.... 

And if you're asking why we have these owl pellets, it's because we are going to dissect them!  How fun! Ha ha!  Graham had recently joined the Science Olympiad for school and this is one of the projects. Here's the diagram of animal bones we might find in the owl pellet:

So here goes!  And oh, did you know that you can buy owl pellets from the internet?  It comes wrapped up in foil in a ziplock bag. Who knew!

We had a bowl of water ready so you can soak the pellet first to soften it.  It didn't take long for us to find some sort of skull:

Look at all the bones we have uncovered!

It's amazing how you can actually distinguish the hip bones and the other leg bones, possibly a scapula, and who knows what else. And then we even found a wish bone! No, we didn't try to make any wishes :-P

Graham was actually a bit upset/scared when we first got into dissecting the owl pellet - to a point he was actually crying.  And then, once we started to dissect the second owl pellet, he actually picked up this skull with his gloved fingers!  I was really surprised but so glad he got through his anxiety.  So much so that Graham decided to put the photo as my background on my phone.  Little stinker!

Well, it was an experience for all of us to say the least.  I'm just glad we had some gloves and chopsticks handy:

I remembered that my older sister had to dissect a frog and a rat for Biology during high school.  Somehow, my class (2 years later) didn't do it as we were in a new curriculum.  Anyhow, we actually caught a rat at home and so she even dissected one on the front porch.  I still remember that to this day. Blaaaah!!!  I wonder if Graham will get through that when his time comes.  Fingers crossed!