Owl Pellets

Posted by pigeonsfortesla@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 78 comments

So tonight I was suddenly besieged by the memory of having to dissect owl pellets in 7th grade science class, and wondered if any of my fellow Xennials had to do the same.

What are owl pellets? You might ask. They are the fur and bones of somewhat digested animals that owls vomit back up. At least, that's the explanation I remember. Anyway.

The sadistic ritual for what felt like months was a bunch of 13 year olds trying to pull away the fur of a dead animal with tweezers, extracting bones, reconstructing skeletons, and then trying to guess what animal your owl had eaten.

At the time, I found it a little strange, but I was up for it. Tonight, when I repeated this out loud to someone who looked at me like I had grown another head, I realized how twisted it really was.

Anyone else?

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UptownJunk802@reddit

7th grade science my bestie and I had our first major bonding experience over that damn lab.

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Blackbird136@reddit

I liked that dissection because it didn’t feel cruel. The owl had already eaten the mice and etc, nothing was dying because of me.

When we dissected frogs, mine had eggs inside and I started crying. 😢

I think it was 7th grade for both.

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lawyers_guns_nomoney@reddit

I hated dissecting stuff in school. Now I hunt. 🤷

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nickd1980@reddit

I fish and gut the trout. That's as far as dissecting goes in modern times for me.

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Fickle_Wrangler_7439@reddit

Same.

I actually managed to get excused from the frog dissection because I was a vegetarian. I did a couple worksheets instead and then read Tamora Pierce for the rest of the classes. Good times.

Agree on the owl pellets and I actually thought it was kinda cool. Mine had a whole vole skeleton in it. In hindsight... how did the supply company acquire so many owl pellets so regularly? I doubt that was humane. Bleh.

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nickd1980@reddit

Thanks for bringing up memory, I did that in 6th grade. I do not remember what was inside the owl pellets though except for bones that the owl ate.

I thought by the time I got to high school I thought I would have to dissect frogs but nope didn't happen because I took Integrated Science 9 and 10 instead for us non smart peeps took instead of biology and chemistry.

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CottaBird@reddit

We never did owl pellets, but we did a fish, squid, cow eyeball, and a pig heart. I still vividly remember the texture of the pig heart.

As an adult, my wife and I pick apart owl pellets all the time. We’re both amateur naturalists, so we get excited about this stuff.

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AssSpelunkingAtheist@reddit

7th grade, we did owl pellets and earthworms. I found it rather interesting tbh.

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blue_suavitel@reddit

Ooooooooooooomgggggg yes I totally forgot about those dry ass nuggets!

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O_W_Liv@reddit

Did that in 2nd and 3rd grades. Still think it's cool to do.

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Madam_Apathy@reddit

Yep, 7th grade bio. I had a huge squirrel skull and 16 mouse skulls and several leg bones. ‘Twas a record for the teacher.

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Intelligent_Serve_30@reddit

At 6th grade camp, we did that too! Glued the pieces to a chart and guessed what it was. Mine was a common mouse.

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delldarlin@reddit

You must've had the owl from Secret of NIMH

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Meatball-Alfredo-Mom@reddit

I hated it…. I think it did it for about 30 seconds before refusing to continue and taking the F for that project.

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theforestbather@reddit

I also hated it! It was the deciding factor for me choosing but to continue with elective biology courses.

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AshDogBucket@reddit

We dissected fetal pigs and it was a life changing day for me. Up until that point i was really excited about it - having watched alot of X-files, the Autopsy show, and other pre CSI forensic shows, I had decided I wanted to be a medical examiner when i grew up. Sadly, dissecting the pig made it clear i would not be doing that for a living. I blamed the smell of fformaldehyde but in reality I struggled with my feelings about the poor dead creatures.

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tc_cad@reddit

We did that in grade 8 at the science Olympics. We got first place!

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TheCunningRabbit@reddit

My son just did that last year in third grade.

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QueerTree@reddit

Had to? HAD to??? Got to! One of my favorite things ever.

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FormidableMistress@reddit

We dissected an earth worm to begin with and then a frog. Our biology teacher said after we did the required work we could "explore" and that's how I learned that frog eyes bounce.

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ValancyNeverReadsit@reddit

My mom was my biology teacher (small private school). We did worms, frogs, and fetal pigs. I found it all fascinating. I had a couple of classmates who found it morally wrong, and I think they were able to opt out, maybe if they wrote some kind of essay instead

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LifePedalEnjoyer@reddit

FROG BASEBALL

My school did fetal pigs instead of frogs.

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nvmls@reddit

We had to do both. I almost cried when I opened up the fetal pig and it was just brown chaos that looked nothing like the textbook diagram.

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LtPowers@reddit

that's how I learned that frog eyes bounce.

Well, preserved frog eyes. Unembalmed ones may not.

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FormidableMistress@reddit

This is true. They were hard and bounced like marbles.

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ValancyNeverReadsit@reddit

I’ve never had to dissect one, but my dad found one in our yard one time and excitedly showed it to my siblings & me. So I know about them.

This is also partly why I keep my cats inside

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

I did one of these and a frog. The real cool ones happened "in the 80s."

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elonmusktheturd22@reddit

We had to go find them first. Walk around the woods looking for wing marks in the snow and find them nearby. Not enough for everyone so Mrs Robinson disected them under the projector.

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withbellson@reddit

I found one in the orchard behind our house once. Pulled it apart and found lots of little bones. Then my mom told me I was going to get rabies and I worried I had rabies for the next two months. Good times, good times.

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Affectionate_Ask_769@reddit

We didn’t do it but my kids did

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Famous_Attention5861@reddit

You should sterilize owl pellets if you are dissecting them, ones from scientific supply houses are heat treated because the bacteria inside can make you sick.

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delldarlin@reddit

Dissected all kinda stuff. Owl pellets, earthworms, starfish, fetal pigs (twice!). No frogs though.

This'll sound nuts but I really enjoyed getting to do those. Absolutely fascinating. Could do without the smell though lol

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nvmls@reddit

The smell was so awful! I remember someone in my class got in trouble because he figured out that frog eyes bounced really high.

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nvmls@reddit

Spoiler: It was a vole. It was always a vole.

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kobayashi_maru_fail@reddit

No owl pellets, which is odd because George Bush was hollering about my state’s many owls at the time. We each got a squid and got emotionally attached to it, cut its ink sac and pseudospine out, performed a gyotaku with the creature’s own ink and signed our names in the same, then the rest of the third grade teachers descended with a plug-in skillet, a cutting board, tempura batter ingredients, and plenty of fryer oil. We were nudged outside to clip our squid prints to a clothes line in the light rain, and the faculty fried and ate our dissection project indoors while we watched, only mildly chilly.

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Elevenyearstoomany@reddit

My kiddos spent the night at a museum this year and dissecting owl pellets was one of the activity options. My kids were 9 and newly 7.

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59apache01@reddit

We did it in high school. Mine had a norway rat skull in it.

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Kinky-Bicycle-669@reddit

Yup!

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c_b0t@reddit

Not in science class, but my dad used to take me and my brother to some kind of nature preserve that did talks/demonstrations and we watched at least one about owl pellets. Sometime later we happened upon one while hiking and I started pulling it apart with my bare hands and my dad was, I think, simultaneously impressed and grossed out.

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poopscoopmcgee@reddit

Never did that one but we did a shark in grade 9. The last few weeks at the end of the year. In a building with no ac... that wing smelled awful.

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Jupitersd2017@reddit

Haha I have hundreds of these around my house, I’ve pulled a few apart to see out of curiosity but I didn’t know this was a thing! I should gather them and donate them to a school

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TerpeneTiger@reddit

That's neat you gave so many owls around (or one prolific pooper). When we first moved here I heard so many but not really as of late. Hoping I'll hear them again soon.
And, yes- donate them to a school or nature center. My kids and her friends would love this.

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Jupitersd2017@reddit

We have at least 4 owls that I see regularly, barn and horned, and then we have several red tailed hawks that nest year round in one of our big pine trees! Every few years we end of with a learning to fly hawk that can’t quite get it sorted out/falling into the yard but they figure it out eventually!!!

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TerpeneTiger@reddit

I love these guys. We get them in our neighborhood regularly. A few years we had a juvenile that would hang out on top of people's cars and act like a doofus. He was so fun and came back and acted semi silly the next year too! I want to figure out what kind of owls we have. That's super neat you get to see them.
I just marveled over how many hawks there are here when I first moved here (from Virginia to Missouri)

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Radiant-Avocado-3158@reddit

I think we did it in grade 5. I was maybe the only one into it. It was so cool!

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ObligationJumpy6415@reddit

Yep, I have a vivid memory of pellet dissection day!

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xt0rt@reddit

My buddy, Andy, did this for his 7th grade science fair project.

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dewihafta@reddit

I didnt in my youth, but i did find some that came prewrapped and in a blister pack in the science section of this awesome toy store near us. Our family had a joke about owl pellets (dont ask), so i bought one of them to put in my kid’s xmas stocking.

I think we still have it sitting in the junk drawer.

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bfjizzle@reddit

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mrs_hippiequeen@reddit

did it AND am always scanning the yard for one, because there are two owls that live hanging around at night

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Jerkrollatex@reddit

We did that in my junior high.

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Aprils-Fool@reddit

It’s not twisted. It’s just cool science. Students still get to do this.

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bumfuzzledbee@reddit

4th grade owl pellet 6th grade sheep's eye 8th grade fish HS biology frog, piglet and... something I don't remember Optional anatomy class in 12th grade pregnant cat

Guess my district was really into dissection

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DeltaFlyer0525@reddit

My daughter’s school did this on their one book one school night just this April. They had read the Wild Robot book and one of the teachers had a station set up where they could dissect owl pellets. I never did that as a kid and I was surprised they had that as something to do for a book night.

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dontletyourcrownslip@reddit

Yea. I thought this was so cool that a few years ago I bought some to do with my niece. She liked it too. My spouse thought I was insane and had never heard of people doing this. He's more Gen x.

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mrossm@reddit

We did ours in 4th grade i think

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elliemff@reddit

I did it in 3rd grade. I went to one of those special magnet schools for G&T kids though so I never know if anything we did was normal or not. Nice to hear this was normal.

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Asleep_Onion@reddit

I never had to in school but my parents bought me some at a science store and I took them apart at home. It was pretty cool.

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catsoncrack420@reddit

Yep and it was nasty.

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smoresporn0@reddit

We did that in 5th. Got a fetal pig in 7th..

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pisachas1@reddit

We dissected squids and another class did a baby shark. I live next to the ocean though.

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Rust_Bucket37@reddit

My 5th grader did it this spring in school. I remember doing a frog and a baby pig. I feel like we as a class watched the teacher disect a pellet and as a class identified the bones.

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RiotPurrrl@reddit

Yes! It was so cool. I’ve considered ordering some to pick through for old times sake

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SimplyTheApnea@reddit

There's an oddity convention next week in my area and one of the extra things you can do is pay to dissect an owl pellet.

There's also a class to turn a rat into a small rug, so yea oddities

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