Owl Pellet

Remember Wayne's nickname from first grade? Well, Dr. Science is at it again.  Last weekend I was forcing him to help me do some yard work when he was distracted by an owl pellet he found on the ground underneath the front yard maple tree.  At the beginning of the school year, his class did a whole unit on owls and their teacher ordered owl pellets for all of them to dissect, so he knows all about it. There is no delicate way to describe what an owl pellet is, so I'll just insert this explanation I found at Kidwings:

"Owls, like many other birds, eat their food whole. Since birds do not have teeth, they can't chew their food. Therefore, they use their strong and sharp beaks to rip their prey apart and then swallow large chunks whole. The owl slowly digests its meal by separating the softer materials (such as meat) from the harder material (such as bones). It then regurgitates the harder material along with indigestible items such as feathers and fur in the form of a pellet." -Kidwings

I didn't think to take a picture of it before he started to dissect it, but this is a picture I found in a google search.

He took the pellet to school to show his teacher and she let him bring home some of the tools they used in class for the dissection.  (By dissecting an owl pellet, you can learn about what they eat.) He also knew about a site online where he could print out this bone sorting chart.

 The skull looks huge in this picture, but all of the bones were very tiny and delicate. Wayne found 7 mole skulls in the 2 inch pellet.

 After sorting everything out, he glued the bones to construction paper in an approximation of anatomical correctness.

Kind of cool and creepy at the same time.