He brought it to school thinking that he had successfully killed it, and wanted to donate it for dissection but at 4pm that afternoon, it decided that it was time to crawl our of the wheel barrow we stored him in, and crawl under the school dumpster.
2 school workers and I noosed and dragged it back out, after which it decided to begin striking at us like a cobra! This was a particularly aggressive species of snake, and we were grateful it did not escape into the campus!
It was clear that it was badly injured, so we ended its misery by severing its spinal cord.
The next day, we prepared it for dissection. See the massive hump in it--that's the 12lb (5kg) goose.
Monica did a fine job organizing her 3 groups of 10th Grade Biology Students into teams to carve off skin, snip off tendons and connective tissue, and identify the organs based on a schematic of a small snake she had found for classroom demonstrations.
Just the sheer size of this large specimen provided a clear view of all the significant details without magnification.
The dissection was quite pleasant until we opened the stomach to expose the goose. A foul stench permeated the room and caused many to choke, gag and leave the room hurriedly.
Numerous still photographs and video was captured and is now being offered to the production media class to be edited and collated. The skin is headed for tanning and mounting in the Biology Lad, and the carcass being prepared for flesh-eating beetle experiments. Perhaps we can re-assemble the skeleton after!
What a fun Halloween Gift!
~ Shien
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