15 Owl Pellets Please, Yes, those are feces!

Catchy title!  I had 15 owl pellets ordered and sent to my home.  Remarkable.  We finally hit the bird section of our biology curriculum.  It was time.  We took our aluminum wrapped droppings and opened them like a baked potato:

Then we disected them, yep tore those dookies apart!

 That is a skull of what we believe to be a shrew, those are the teeth!

The bones were remarkable!  Eric had one that the bones were splintered, the owl must have just shattered that animal in it's kill!

Gabriel was the one who didn't want to do it, and once we started he was all into it!

 

I ordered the manual with the pellets and it was a great buy! There are so many illustrations and helps to identify the bones.  We were like rodent CSIers with a cache of clues!

Eric is not officially in Biology with us this year, but who can pass up the opportunity to dissect Owl Pellets! I certainly couldn't!

Everyone found something unique and totally wild in their fur ball of excrement!

 

The pocket microscope was brought out to get a closer look!

 Poor Anna, she was looking at the bones and yelled, "EWWwwwwwww gross, there is blood all over it!!"  Well, actually that was from her nose, she had a bloody nose and dripped on the bones and the microscope area.  Hence the ice on her neck!

 I was really excited about how into this experiment my kidlets got!  Books were passed, discussion was lively and we went from total grossed out to way cool learning!

 We aren't done, the book said to try some that had soaked in water! I'll be back to show that tomorrow! Tony joined in on this ooey gooey experiment!