owl pellets

Grossness alert:
Do not read this post while eating breakfast. (Pregnant niece... this warning is for you!)

I've shared pictures before about the Great Horned Owls that hang out in our palm trees in the back yard. They really are quite amazing. We hear them hoot back and forth with each other and often times have them startle us when they take flight. Their wing span is huge and as their wings flap against the palm fronds, it makes quite a sound. Usually, they just sit up there during the day and snooze, waiting for dark when they start their who-who chattering.

This is an owl that we saw a couple of weeks ago. My sister Janet and her family were spending their spring break with us here in Arizona. They were escaping the cold and (still) snowy Colorado for some good warm sunshine.

And as it turned out, the grass under the palm trees was sprinkled with a few owl pellets. What are those you ask? Well, an owl eats their prey whole. (You can click on the words "owl pellets" above to read more) In most cases they dine on small rodents. Everything they can't digest and eliminate through their tale end is regurgitated. These disgusting interesting "pellets" are barfed up.

I asked my nephew, Braden, if he would like to dissect the pellets to see if we could tell what the owl had eaten. He was super excited to join me in this activity. I equipped him with all the necessary tools. Gloves and a steak knife. Halfway through the project, his mom handed him some safety goggles (her sunglasses) to protect his eyes from some of the dust particles that were blowing towards his eyes.

Gloved thumbs up!

He started by cutting the medium sized pellet open. And then he proceeded to pick away the fur bits to expose the bones.

It didn't take long before some interesting bones began to appear. It was about now that we were feeling really scientific and all paleontologist like. I know it isn't a dinosaur, but it sounded good.

 And then he started to uncover this little beauty. Can you see the long hairs sticking out?

Here he is, safety glasses and all, getting pretty serious about picking away all the loose pieces of fur and such. It's the such I really wonder about.

And this is what started to appear. The skull! Wowza!!

Separating the bones from the "other stuff" was a little tedious. But, he kept at it.

We were all pretty intrigued by the fact that the teeth were all still connected to the skull.

After using the first thing I grabbed, a steak knife, for his dissecting...I remembered that the Reptile Wrangler had a few leftover medical tools in the garage. I wished I had remembered these little things sooner, it would have made Braden's job a little easier. And, might have helped the rest of us get over the fact that I had given him a steak knife, out of the kitchen drawer, to cut up a regurgitated rodent.

And if using a steak knife wasn't bad enough, I then put all the boney parts in one of my pans, so that we could boil away all the... germs? This was done on the advise of my retired teacher/sister ,whom I had been texting play by play pictures of the whole procedure.  She said, "boil them.... you know like you would chicken bones."  Well, I don't often boil chicken bones, but it made sense.

Until the kitchen started to smell. And it didn't smell like chicken! Yuck.

So, I dumped the water out and put all the bones on a paper towel and set it out in the sun to dry. I left it there for a couple of days thinking the sun would bleach them out.

And it did. And now I have a collection of rodent bones. I'm not sure what kind of rodent it is, but they are interesting bones. 

Ya, I know. I'm pretty surprised that I even suggested we do this myself. And, that I touched the bones. And, that they now are sitting in a jar on our table on the back patio. I'm also collecting all the pellets I find. I was told I could probably sell them on the internet to teacher's who use them in their classrooms. I don't think I'm ready to become an owl pellet seller on the internet, so I think I will save them for one particular daughter of mine, who is aspiring to be a middle school science teacher. I will have a pretty nice collection for her if these owls keep up their feasting.

Now, the only unfortunate thing that we learned when looking up owl pellet information, is that the owls don't roost during the day in the same spot that they hunt. Where they roost is where they urp the pellets. So, I guess our population of rodents will continue. Unless of course the little rats decide to go for a swim in the middle of the night and become drowned rats. Which is a common thing around here.

I did use bleach to scrub my sink, pan and steak knife before running them through the dishwasher twice. You're right, I didn't put my sink in the dishwasher but, I did a thorough cleaning for sure.

It was a pretty interesting activity for all of us. And I'm sure it will be on the top of Braden's spring break best memories list. Well, maybe after the Tom car (dune-buggy-jeep-like) ride through the dessert hills, or the two Rockie's spring training games,(including getting a pretty awesome player autograph) or the swim days, or the massive amounts of BBQ he enjoyed, or the trip to the ASU campus and a shopping spree at the college bookstore. That's not a list that just anyone can say they did while on spring break. Especially the dissecting owl pellet part. Oh, and watching his Auntie nearly fall into the pool while trying to scare off a menacing hawk with her landscape pebble throwing skills, nearly hitting her nephew in the eye with the pebble. And also enjoying the fact that said Auntie then felt very proud of herself when the hawk flew off, thinking she had successfully scared it, only to learn the master pebble throwing nephew had better aim then she did and was actually the one to hit the palm branch and scare the hawk off. (I scare these hawks off because they raid the nests of the pretty song birds.)

This desert home is always an adventure.