By: Buzz McCoy
[2001-02-13]
long forgotten little story of my innocent childhood
here's a short story from my childhood, that you may find interesting because you are originally from oregon... right?
i was in my back yard today and it triggered a memory of something i did many years ago when i was a young boy in 6th grade. i was in science class and our teacher had us examining owl droppings. it was a fun and exciting class. the teacher had owl droppings from washington mailed to our school, and we actually got to pick them apart! it was great fun. apparently, owls eat mice and other small rodents whole, and then poop out the skulls and skeletons of the animals in small sausage link sized poopies. then each student got his own poopie, and a few lucky ones got perfectly formed little mice skulls to play with... until the end of the class, when the teacher took all of our skulls and kept them for himself. well, this was very sad, and i wanted my very own owl poopie mouse skull, so i went into my backyard. i knew i had heard owls hooting atop the tall pine trees, so i searched for my own owl poopie. after some searching, i found one! actually, i found a couple, and i brought them inside to dissect. i was saddened after i examined one after another to find no rodent skulls. in fact, many of my owl poopies smelled differently from the ones we had in class. i then realized that i was picking apart doggie poopies. and that was the saddest day of my life.
We didn't get crap to
play with! We took
earthworms apart, I'm
still amazed that they
have ten hearts.
My buddy Paul had a
monkey hand that he
wore on a chain around
his neck, I wanted one,
too! But I found a big
20 million year old
shark's tooth at the
beach. We'd look for
mantis egg cases to hide
so that there would be
hundreds of mantises swarming
around the classroom.
My friend Raleigh had
a Japanese soldier skull
that he found in a cave
on Guam. Charlie had a crow
that could say, "Coca-Cola"
but no owl crap.
Did you have like scientific equipment or were you knife and spooning the disection prosese. and also whith you teacher I mean what was he going to do with 30 rat skulls? make and art car? perfrom some evil ritual? I contend that nobody needs thirty rat skulls unless they're trying to put together some hip post apocoliptic outfit, even then mouse skulls are sort of weiney compaired to like bird skulls or people skulls
Actually, the owls regurgitate the skulls and whatnot back up... puke.. you know?
Yes on the puke thing.
We always called 'em "owl pellets," which sounds like something you drop in water when you're having your boss over for dinner and you need an owl NOW but the store was out.
If you got your dog to eat action figures - the little ones, like '80s G.I. Joe - the end result would be similar to reconstructing a rat skeleton. It'd probably be easier.
There are several methods of augury
involving owl leavings, which is why
we couldn't have that kind of stuff
in normal school. Anne MacCaffery's
book, "Druid" has been placed on
placed on restricted access, and
may be banned altogether in the
local public schools and then the
kids will want it althemore.
wow, and all these years i thought i was touching poop in school. i'm going to have to check my grades from that class, i'll betchu they stunk! konig - "we didn't get crap to play with!" that is funny on so many levels. well actually just one, but its a big funny level. as for what my teacher did with the skulls, i'm not sure. anyone ever see that 'the cell' with vince vaughn and that lopez whore? when they showed the killers private little abode, he had i think a bird skull mounted on a little naked dolls body. i'm not sure what they were trying to portray there. something spooky and evil, i suppose. reminded me a bit of those egyption men with the bird heads. but anyhoo, i would like to have one of them(although i don't have a secret abode). i thought it looked pretty cool. maybe thats what my teacher was making. a huge little naked doll with rodent head army.
anne mccaffrey is a dry author. i liked "the hero and the crown" by robin mckinley. it looks like a kids book, but its awful good, and my buddy who did the whole robert jordan "wheel of time" craparama said that it was in his top 10 books (fantasy, obviously).
oh yeah, and speaking of monkey hands, sharks teeth and jap army-skulls. when i die, this is what i'm doing... i'm approximately 6 feet 5 inches tall. i'm a tall glass a water. i hope by the time i die, i have a grandson, cause if i don't, my whole reason for living will be for naught. i want to have my thigh bone (or femur, whatever) bronzed and plaqued for my grandson. wouldn't that be a neat present? he could look up on the wall, and be, possibly, the only kid in america with his grandfathers leg bone bronzed forever on the wall. and this is the dope part: my thigh bone is so f-n long, its like, freakish. i'll bet with the right tools you could make it into a baseball bat! i'd call it thunderbone (anyone who knows simpsons trivia, will understand...)
later guys
-buzz
thats really funny actually sorry that happened to you though!:)
