
Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot - fanf2
http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2018/03/two-girls-dead-raccoon-and-my-crockpot.html
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GlenTheMachine
My wife did this as a PhD student in Animal Science, along with a fellow grad
student. Only her skeleton was that of a draft horse — she mainly wanted the
skull. It took place on the hill in back of the lab building and used a fire,
an enormous cauldron, and a canoe paddle.

I can only imagine what undergrads wandering by thought. But we still have the
horse skull in a tupperware in the basement.

She teaches comparative animal anatomy now. For a few years she kept a colony
of flesh-eating beetles in her lab for cleaning skeletons. They were delivered
by FedEx — yes, you can order flesh-eating beetles online. Unfortunately the
box had a puncture, and beetles were coming out. The FedEx guy who delivered
it sprinted into her office, threw the box on the desk and sprinted out again
without stopping to ask for a signature. I wonder why...

~~~
johan_larson
I wonder if you could use an anthill for this work. Put the carcass in a cage
of some sort so it doesn't get scattered and put the cage near an anthill.
Come back a month later and the cage should have nothing but bones.

~~~
sohkamyung
I'm not an expert, I but I don't recall ants being used for the cleaning of
bones. That's usually the job of beetles or fly maggots.

In any case, I found this post [1] about the various ways to clean animal
bones. Interesting reading.

[1] [http://www.jakes-bones.com/p/how-to-clean-animal-
bones.html](http://www.jakes-bones.com/p/how-to-clean-animal-bones.html)

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bluedino
I was eating lunch with some co-workers around the time of the Boston marathon
bombing a few years ago. One of the people didn't know what a pressure cooker
was, and they were showing one on whatever news channel was playing.

Another co-worker piped up with, "When I was in 5th grade my mom used a
pressure cooker to clean the bones of a dead sheep I found"

Intrigued, I had him finish the story. They lived in a farm area and there was
a small sheep that had been hit by a car. He took it home, and they followed a
similar process to clean the bones and he used some wire to put the skeleton
back together for a school science project.

~~~
killgrove
I do wonder, with the ridiculous popularity of the InstantPot, when we'll see
a post somewhere about how to use it to macerate a dead animal. It'd be
perfect for it!

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mygo
We do this all the time. When they mentioned a slow cooker I was thinking have
they not heard of a pressure cooker? I read in an InstantPot ad that you can
get fall-off-the-bone meat, from frozen, in less than an hour and I thought
man that’s the tool for de-fleshing the bones of small vertebrates right there

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ChuckMcM
This is a great story. My wife and I did similar sorts of projects when we
were home schooling our kids (my favorite was the trip to Yellowstone for a
geology/chemistry/geography/ecology/biology quinfecta :-)

It doesn't mention, but implies something I found important. That is that as a
parent I had to invest my own time in equal to theirs in their learning. It
lead to push back at work when I would insist on being home so that we could
all have dinner as a family and then work on family projects in the evening,
but for me it was rewarded by kids that were engaged and thoughtful and
willing to dig into questions deeply.

I have no idea if that would work for anyone else of course.

~~~
kraig911
I am thinking of home schooling my daughter with my wife. For one my daughter
is autistic and special needs programs in Texas are fairly ok to bad. Two
because the curriculum is so brain draining and well my daughter simply would
refused to participate in some thing like that. I just am afraid of the
socialization with other kids. How did you get around that?

~~~
ChuckMcM
The social question comes up, generally first or second[1], when people find
out that my wife and I chose the homeschooling route. We live in the Bay area,
which is pretty urban, and there is a pretty vibrant homeschooling community.

One of the activities my kids participated in was the Riekes Nature Studies
program. Once a week a group of about 20 similarly aged students would spend
all day (9AM to 3PM) at Huddart Park (a wooded nature park near Woodside) and
study different aspects of the park. They would count bird populations,
identify tracks, identify plants and their properties, relationships between
water and plants and animals, Etc. They also did camp trips to nearby places,
once as far as Death Valley. All the while teaching camaraderie, respect, and
how to socialize with your peers. We also did a 'science roundabout' with 6
other families home schooling where all of the kids would go to one of the
parents houses for a half day of science curriculum. We had a Doctor, a couple
of engineers, a couple of Chemists, and a biologist I believe. Two days a
week. each day one of the parents would host the group, so while the group met
twice a week each parent saw them once every three weeks. That was a good
amount of time to work up a concept/lab for the next group session. They also
participated in a bunch of other activities as group, whether it was Church
related or softball or scouts.

What they didn't have to deal with is bullies in middle school and
uninterested adult supervision. Or being traumatized by kids that were
attempting to establish dominance through social stratification. When one of
those negative patterns surfaced in one of the kids in our cohort it was
pretty clear pretty quickly that either they could learn to be an adult about
this stuff or not participate. That is really effective on 10 and 11 year olds
who are trying to figure this stuff out.

[1] In my area the other question that competes with this one is "Can my kid
get into a good university if they have been home schooled?" and the answer is
yes, and sometimes more easily if they have a lot of activities and projects.

[2] [http://www.riekes.org/nature/](http://www.riekes.org/nature/)

~~~
fsck_hmschling
I will go ahead and challenge this- not that you can't be right, or even
aren't right in the case of your kids (who I am sure you do a great job of
taking care of- this isn't meant to insult you personally), but as someone who
was homeschooled and had a very different experience, it's worth having a
cautionary point of view- if for no other reason than to illustrate how NOT to
homeschool.

First, OP is specifically asking about their child, who is autistic. While I
would generally suggest that the average person is incapable of providing an
education equal to that provided by a whole school full of teachers, it's
often the case that if one child requires more attention than the rest of
class, they might benefit more from additional attention and 1-on-1 teaching
than they might from having more skilled teachers without additional time to
spend. So it is a reasonable suggestion.

I'll start at the end, with the question: can you get into a good university?
Sure. I didn't really apply to a lot of universities but I did get a full ride
at the best engineering school in the state. It hinged more or less entirely
on my GPA and standardized test scores. There's probably a whole book you
could write on how poor these criteria are, but that's tangential to my point.

I was homeschooled through high school. In general, it was a negative
experience. Primarily, I would say, it was because I didn't socialize much.
That's not to say that I didn't have bs activities that my parents came up
with, I did. We were a part of the local home school group, I took classes
with a group of other home schoolers at what I pejoratively referred to as
"homeschooler public school." I even managed to join a sports team for a tiny
christian school that couldn't get enough players for a full team (I did enjoy
that). I think that probably my parents would have said that I had all the
social interaction that I ever needed. But actually I spent days or weeks
completely alone. I had essentially two friends, that I saw every few weeks.
In high school I basically taught myself all of my classes, then studied and
took the tests. It sounds like you're doing things a lot better than that. But
this isn't meant to be a critique of you(I don't know enough about what you're
doing to even attempt that, even if I wanted to), it's supposed to be a
cautionary tale.

I don't know if my experience was "average," but taken from my acquaintances
(all home schooled) my results were actually better than average. Many had no
outside contact for even longer periods of time, and lived in more isolated
areas. Most did very little after high school and then joined the family
business. I suppose it's likely that this is a difference between rural
Missouri and SF.

>What they didn't have to deal with is bullies in middle school and
uninterested adult supervision.

I my experience, that's not really a plus, it's just another overextension of
supervision which has become so common these days. The world doesn't stop
functioning the same way just because you don't experience it. You just wind
up with kids that don't know how to deal with that sort of thing- or worse,
try bullying themselves when they think they can get away with it. I
personally witnessed this on multiple occasions at ostensibly supervised
events where the adults were on the other side of a room or we had gone out
back.

My parents were very strict and I was virtually never away from them until
after I got a job, but that didn't stop me and my five siblings from breaking
rules, instead we worked out systems to help us break our parents rules with
no or minimal repercussions. We would have whole fake storylines of what we
were doing going on that we would switch to if we got caught and post
sentries. The sentries would frequently have codewords so that they didn't get
caught helping others disobey. My point, so tangentially made, is that kids
sometimes need a chance to interact with others without omnipotent but less
than omniscient judges interfering.

In summary, what I am attempting to say is that homeschooling certainly can
work well but from my (admittedly quite limited) sampling rarely does. That's
not to say you shouldn't do it- just make sure that you want to, and that
you're ready to spend the time to do it right.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Thank you sharing your experience. It reinforces my appreciation of how such
things are never "one size fits all" and that in every distribution there will
be examples on both sides of the median.

I particularly resonate with this sentiment; _"... just make sure that you
want to, and that you're ready to spend the time to do it right."_

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johnchristopher
This is really cool on many different levels ! Those kids seem to have fun :).

Plus, it's somehow satisfying that the story is being told on a old-fashion
(what am I writing) blog. I strongly believe it wouldn't have been as
structured, as accessible if it had been told through instagram or facebook
(too much noise, not enough authenticity (this is the media guy in me
talking).

The gallery works, the text works... there is no noise on the page.

~~~
killgrove
Ha, thanks! (I'm the author of the post.) It's funny, I don't post to my
personal blog much anymore - started it in 2007 on Blogger, and so it's
definitely old-school. (Plus, I have a column at Forbes, so I tend to post
most of my writing there.)

~~~
smoyer
You are one awesome mom! (See my other post on this page for a description of
my wife and my experience raising our kids.) Thanks for sharing the story :)

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callmeed
_> she really wanted to macerate a bat, to see how its wing looked on the
inside. But that's not gonna happen because of the risk of rabies._

Err, depending on your location (in the US), there is a risk of raccoons
carrying rabies as well. It's generally isolated to the east coast, but worth
noting.

[https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/wild_an...](https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/wild_animals.html)

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amha
This is amazing! This is the sort of thing that makes me want to have
kids––the opportunity to turn whatever life throws at you into an awesome DIY
science projects. (Though, I guess I could do it without kids, too––but
imagine how cool it would be to be a kid growing up in this kind of
household!)

~~~
smoyer
As a parent of four kids, I'd encourage you to decide to have kids based on
some other criteria - you can do this project without the presence of kids.

However ... taking your comment in the spirit in which I'm guessing it was
intended, my wife and I have had a lot of fun helping the kids try almost
anything they were interested in. There's simply no reason to limit a child's
curiosity (and I'd argue that many of us here are those whose childhood
curiosity survived somewhat intact). Kids interests can change weekly and we
just let that happen. We did usually require that they finish a project once
they started it.

One example is that I was digging fence-posts and commented to my wife that,
under the top-soil of what was once our farmette, there was a layer of clay.
Of course my daughter pictured the type of clay that artists use (and a
pottery wheel) but did you know that, with the right amount of water added,
you can mold Pennsylvania (US) clay just fine. And you can do a reasonable job
of firing it on a patio grill (don't try glazing it).

I was brought up helping my dad around the house and we also extended this to
our kids ... if we didn't know how to do something we learned it together. And
so now our kids (the two who are adults and out-of-the-house) will do much of
their own maintenance. My daughter's first car is a '71 Super Beetle in which
she completely restored the interior. I helped her weld new cooling manifolds
which was the only exterior/mechanical problem with the car.

Finally, there are lots of kids that don't have parents (and plenty that have
absentee parents. Here in the US you can volunteer with Big Brothers / Big
Sisters and "borrow" a kid for a limited amount of time. Volunteering is also
a great way to help the next generation of "makers" grow in their craft!

~~~
killgrove
When I was a kid in the 80s, my dad started something called "Family Home
Evening." We'd get together and my brother and I would ask questions like
"where does lightning come from?" or "does coke rot your teeth?" We'd look up
info in our Encyclopedia Brittanica (ha!), and often do experiments (like
putting my dad's extracted wisdom teeth in coke). So, yeah, I couldn't help
but do the same with my own girls!

~~~
smoyer
When my oldest two (now 26 and 24) were in high-school we often had 2-4 extra
kids at our dinner table each evening (we purposely bought a big table). We
had a lot of comments about how "interesting" our dinner conversations were
compared to their own houses. And there was lots of laughter too. It turns out
that high school is also a good age to teach your kids the difference between
debate and argument.

The other thing we did was optimize our house so our kids and their friends
would want to hang out here. It's much easier to keep an eye on them when
they're not off somewhere else (thinking back, there were a lot of times my
parents didn't know where I was). A few of their friends could be problematic
but by treating most of them as adults, they tried to live up to it.

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hh3k0
The kid in me thinks that this is amazing and I wish I'd have been able to do
something similar -- but current me thinks about how I could never use that
crockpot for food again.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _I could never use that crockpot for food again._

They actually mentioned that the crockpot in question was brought home from a
lab, and it was used specifically for cleaning biogoo from bones.

But otherwise, I totally agree on the ick factor. I'm a little surprised that
a crockpot with detergent, and then hydrogen peroxide, is all it takes to
sufficiently disinfect dead critter stuff.

(Then again, I toss raw meat in a crock pot and then shove it directly into my
mouth, so I don't know why I'm surprised.)

~~~
chrissnell
Disinfecting things isn't as hard as some might think. Sewage processing, for
example, is pretty low-tech. By the time your toilet water makes it to the
plant, most of the poop has dissolved. They run the liquid through a metal
strainer to get most of the non-organics out (condoms, tampons, etc). Then the
sewage is pumped into settling ponds where most of the solids settle to the
bottom and they aerate it so that the bacteria can do their thing and digest
it further. They move the liquid through a succession of ponds and tanks until
it's basically clear and everything has settled out. To disinfect it, they
either run it through a mesh of UV light tubes or add bleach (less ideal).
After that's done, you could basically drink the water but they typically dump
it into a stream.

~~~
ars
> but they typically dump it into a stream

And then the next city downstream gets that water and drinks it anyway.

Depending on where you live (i.e. near a large river) reducing water usage
doesn't really make much environmental difference, as long as you dump it in
the sewer: The water gets reused many many times on its way to the ocean.

~~~
adrianN
Yeah, unless you live in an area that gets a chunk of its water from an fossil
aquifer.

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00ajcr
Useful tips and a nice skeleton!

There's also a great guide to cleaning bones from animals (in various states
of decay) on the blog Jake's Bones that I've referred to a couple of times:
[http://www.jakes-bones.com/p/how-to-clean-animal-
bones.html](http://www.jakes-bones.com/p/how-to-clean-animal-bones.html)

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gumby
I'm glad the girls' natural curiosity was supported and enjoyed.

When I was little we would bring in little things we'd found out back (frogs,
mice, birds etc) and my mum was always happy to say, "lets open them up and
see how they work". For the frog we used some vodka in a margarine pot but
after that she kept some ether in the fridge (also useful when castrating the
cat).

She was pretty happy when I sent her a photo of her grandson, scalpel in hand,
dissecting a dead bird he had claimed from the cat. Unfortunately the only
book he had was on human anatomy but we were able to find gross parallels and
gross differences and that was pretty educational too.

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wglass
Bleach works too. Found a small decayed deer carcass by the side of the road
years ago and soaked the skull in water and bleach then hung it up on my
porch. Hydrogen peroxide sounds more environmentally friendly.

~~~
killgrove
Bleach is great but needs to be watched more carefully. It can destroy bone.
H2O2 is slower but less finicky.

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100k
This is really cool!

When I was a kid, I read a book about Eugenia Clark
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenie_Clark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenie_Clark))
who defleshed a dead animal she found as a kid. I found a dead bird and tried
to do the same using an old coffee tin over our camp stove in the garage. My
parents were nonplused (my dad was a biologist too, but he studied plants so I
don't think he was into defleshing dead animals...) and that was the end of my
biology experiments.

I'm glad to know to actually do this. Maybe someday my daughter and I can do
the project.

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bazzargh
If any of y'all liked the idea of this project for your kids but not the
roadkill aspect, "Make Your Own Dinosaur Out of Chicken Bones"
[http://www.levins.com/bonebooks.shtml](http://www.levins.com/bonebooks.shtml)
... is a fun project. And instead of just macerating, you get to make soup!

NB: as I recall, it takes 2 chickens, some tools, and a lot of patience

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sohkamyung
In Singapore, a school buried a racing pigeon found dead for seven months and
later dug it up. They posted about it at [1]

[1] [http://www.besgroup.org/2017/10/24/skeleton-racing-homer-
pig...](http://www.besgroup.org/2017/10/24/skeleton-racing-homer-pigeon-
unearthed/)

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jay-anderson
There's an owl living above an abandoned silo on a relative's property. It's
always fun to see how interested kids are in looking through the bones at the
bottom. Though in this case there are too may different types of bones to
attempt to make a full skeleton.

