marder madness

I promise, there are other things going on in my life; I don't spend all my time playing with dead animals.

But right now I'm extremely fascinated with this process and since I never got to dissect anything in high school, I'm making up for it.

Today Mr. Holden, a student, and I got to work cleaning off the skull of both the marder and a pheasant. If you know me at all you know I loathe birds, so I rather enjoyed picking it to shreds and pulling its eyeballs out of its skull. Sorry, too graphic?

I was also happy to see that two of my seventh grade life science students came and got their hands dirty as well. It was neat for them to see the pheasant skull because tomorrow and Wednesday our topic is birds! What perfect timing.

Now both skulls are happily sitting in a beaker of bleach water to get cleaned and disinfected. I'm sure there will be another update when the process is complete.

Here are a few shots from the afternoon:

marder

Today I had the chance to observe the skinning of a marten (or marder). A marten is a rodent-type animal similar to a weasel or ferret that is unique to Europe and apparantly gets into people's cars and destroys the engine! Anyway, our high school biology teacher always jumps on the chance to take a piece of roadkill and use it as a teachable moment for his students. So naturally when someone reported the murdered marder Arthur quickly snatched it up and froze it until there was time to really check it out.

That time was today.

I must warn you, this post is not for the faint of heart. Seriously. As a science teacher, I am expected to enjoy all things creepy-crawly-slimy-make-your-skin-crawl-gross. Unfortunately, I have a rather low gross-out tolerance. So mostly in my attempt at getting over my sqeamishness, and partly due to my desire to eventually become a hardcore science teacher, I knew I had no choice but to partake in the skinning of the marder. Being the only female science teacher on the Kandern campus means I've got to pull my weight!

My intentions were to simply observe, take a few pictures and maybe a video. I never planned to "get my hands dirty," but by the end of the ordeal I suddenly found myself gloved and slicing through the sub-cutaneous tissue to separate the skin from the carcass. I also had the privilege of using the saw to cut off both front paws. Wow.

The most amazing part was that I didn't get nearly as grossed out as I had anticipated. Maybe it's because I've been learning so much about God's amazing body system designs for my life science class. To see the whole thing laid out in front of me instead of seeing pictures in my textbook made it that much more awesome. The whole process just fascinated me to no end, and I was ready to start cutting it open to check out all the internal organs! But, baby steps. For now, I am content with the progress I made today and actually quite proud of the fact that I, Rachel Bertschi, helped skin a marder.

For those of you actually interested in this kind of thing, here are a few pictures, along with the video I took of Arthur sawing off one of the rear paws. Seriously, don't scroll down any farther if you are easily grossed out. Don't say I didn't warn you. Click on the photos to enlarge, if you dare.

Easter

For Easter my family went to church in Elyria to see family and see my cousin Cami play a role in the teens' drama. After the service we went to my aunt Becky and uncle Raymond's house, where we were treated to a delish meal courtesy of Raymond's mad cooking skills. No trip to their house would be complete without a little photo shoot with the five munchkins...

dog walk

Today my parents and I took our three dogs for a hike at the local Metro Park. Yes, we have THREE dogs now. In case you were wondering, putting three dogs and three adults into a car is not an easy task! First the dogs and I tried cramming into the back of my little red car but as you can see, it was rather cramped. Jake takes up a whole seat, Duke sits on my lap, and Buck is wedged between the backseat and frontseat because he doesn't get around very well and couldn't get up onto the seat! You can't even see Buck in this picture.

So we switched to the Explorer and put all three dogs in the trunk. They seemed to enjoy riding back there, and I was happy to not have dogs sitting on my lap, slobbering all over me. Duke's nervous car habit is excessive drooling; the other day when we took him to Petsmart, he sat on my lap and by the time we got to the store the sleeve of my hoodie was soaked from elbow to wrist!

At the park we only walked a short distance because Buck is old, Duke is a baby, and Jake is horrible at walking on a leash. A friend and I took Jake for a walk a few days ago and he basically walked us! To be honest, Duke isn't spectacular at leash walking either, but that's why he's going to puppy school. Maybe when I come home this summer the dogs will be better behaved on their leashes so we can go on more enjoyable walks.

When I was a kid I always thought being a dogwalker would be a fun job. I even looked for dogwalking jobs when I lived in Chicago, but nothing ever panned out. My parents humored me and let me attempt to walk all three dogs at the same time!