mystery treasure and sea star dissection

I think the "fortunes" were special energy rocks that brought boundless speed or peaceful dreams - something indeed magical.  We spent the day with friends at the farm, winding our way through the afternoon, looking at various things through the microscope (yellow jacket's wing - it's hairy! - a drop of water, one precious donated drop of mama blood), following a mysterious treasure hunt, looking for a lost (and then found...sadly eaten) turkey...until we finally landed at our planned part of the day, a sea star dissection.

If Eliza looks less than pleased, it's because she is on the fence about dissections in the first place (which you might recall from past posts!).  The specimen smell so terrible (yes, not much has changed since my high school days, except that we can elect to do this outside instead of cooped up in a room), and it is actually a lot of work to do, bent over in the fumes.  She quickly elected to go inside and look up a dissection online to see how else is could be done, leaving her sea star to me.  We had learned some interesting things about sea stars in preparation for the experience - they basically turn their food into soup and absorb it, and have the ability to project their stomach/mouth out of their body and squeeze it into a tiny opening in a mussel shell in order to soupify their meal!  They also siphon in water through a small disc on their back in order to pump water down to their tube feet so they can ambulate across the ocean floor.   We watched several short video clips of their movement and their eating methods - and in addition, they are so strange and beautiful to look at.  However, I also found it to be the most disturbing dissection we've done (last summer we dissected cows' eyes and one snake), possibly because it was so difficult to cut through the hard bony plates and while we were able to identify many parts of its internal circulatory system and digestive bits, it looked like carnage when we were through.  I won't show you that part - I still have some icky feelings about the experience, which I suppose is good and will help us work through whether or not this is something we want to do again.  I think it is amazing to be able to actually see what an animal looks like inside, and figure out how it moves, digests, and reproduces, but I can also see us just doing this online, watching a dissection without the carnage and the super bad smells.  I think Eliza would agree with me...

I'm not sure what Ani would think and I can't ask her just now, as she is on a mini road trip with her dear friend Noah.  We are having a weekend alone with our "big girl", going to see art, having dinner, attending opening night of Metamorphoses at the University.  She keeps commenting on how quiet it is around here; I think she is missing her sister...But I think Ani is having a grand time - we got a text last night during dinner that said they were taking a pit stop at a Texaco station, and Ani was in the restroom singing at the top of her lungs...