Owl Pellets

When I was in charge of teaching science for Taylor's co-op we studied mammals.   I was really excited to learn about owls and dissect owl pellets.  Unfortunately the kids weren't nearly as excited as I was.  They were pretty grossed out.  I have to admit I was a little bit squeamish at first and put the gloves on so I wouldn't have to touch the pellets.  Pretty soon I took the gloves off and just got down to the nitty gritty.  After a while the kids did the same although Taylor kept her gloves on the whole time.  Tanner got right into it and was finding little bones left and right.  It was a little bit harder to build the skeleton and figure out what the owl ate than I thought it would be since the bones were all so little.  It was fascinating to see similar bones to what we have only much much smaller.  At the end of the day we learned a lot, got our hands a little dirty and had fun.

Thank goodness Abbi was there to help Lexie with her skeleton.  I had my hands full helping all the kids find the teeny tiny bones without breaking them
 

Tanner was a trooper and found a ton of itty bitty bones

At the end of the experiment we all got a little dirty, found a lot of bones and learned a lot.  I definitely learned that I did not choose the wrong profession when I chose to be a Mom instead of a Archaeologist.  The funny thing is I put that major on my transcript to BYU because I figured it wasn't a popular major and it would increase my odds of getting in.  It never translated into a desire to study bones and the bits of animal parts didn't change my mind one bit.