Ever wanted to dissect vomit? Me neither. However, that’s exactly what the ecology class is doing so that they can learn about the food web. They have spent about a week and a half trying to dissect an owl “pellet,” otherwise called throw up.
What you do is take one owl pellet and cut it open with a knife. When you open it up you will notice that there is a lot of hair and possibly you can already notice that there are some bones in it as well. After you cut it open you have to separate the bones from the fur while you are trying not to break the bones. The last st
ep that you have to do is glue the bones onto the paper so that you can tell if the animal was a rodent or not.There were many challenges that the students had to overcome while they were trying to be careful but also hurry so that they can get the project in on time. Junior Shelby Strang had some troubles with the project. “Trying to get the fur away from the bones was hard,” said Shelby. They had learned many things about owls that they hadn’t known before. “I didn’t know that the owl regurgitated the bones from the animal that they ate,” explained Shelby.
Senior Andrea Schaedler had the exact same challenges that Shelby had as she also had trouble with separating the bones from the fur. “The hardest part for me was separating the fur from the bones,” replied Andrea. Andrea had also found out many things that she hadn’t known before. “I didn’t know that owls threw up their food,” said Andrea.
Mr. Cushman’s hardest part was trying to get the kids to actually do the assignment. “The hardest part was getting the kids to turn in the assignment. No, actually it was probably retrieving the bones from the fur,” explained Mr. Cushman. The point of this assignment to get the students to understand what went on in the food web. “We did this because we were talking about the food web and how it all interrelates and I thought that this would give them a better understanding about it,” replied Mr. Cushman
