Home School Science

We've been really enjoying all our home school courses this year, but I have to say that both Emmy and London are really interested in the science class.  We are focusing on animals this year and have covered everything from ungulates (hoofed creatures) to feliforms to our latest - rodents.  One of the suggestions by the curriculum as an extra project was to dissect an owl pellet.

What's an owl pellet, you ask?  Well all birds of prey eat their prey whole and the extra parts that are indigestible (like fur and bones) get compressed into a tight pellet and regurgitated.  We've actually found these on our back deck.  But since I didn't keep any of the ones that were conveniently donated to me by the neighborhood owl, I had to order one online.  Yes, you can order owl puke online!

Here's what it looks like.  It's pretty tiny and I thought I had wasted my money as there was no way anything was stuffed inside this little thing.

My future scientists ready to get dissecting!

Almost immediately they started finding miscellaneous bones which we could match to the diagram on the package.

Can you see all the bones!  This owl definitely had a taste for shrew.

At the end we were able to piece together a crude skeleton of a shrew.  Pretty amazing stuff!