Of Mice and Men
Rabbit on a Stick...
Coolest. Lab. Ever. Apparently it doesn’t take much to amuse me (or perhaps it’s that odd things amuse me), but one of our recent labs in Mammalogy was learning how to make a museum specimen from a mouse, i.e. skinning it and stuffing it, and I loved it.
The lab was optional, and more than half our lab opted out. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage the skinning of a mouse, but seeing as how I want to be a veterinarian, for crying out loud, you’d think I’d be able to manage.
Fortunately, the meecies were already dead, victims of some prior lab experiment and recycled for our benefit. At least they were recycled, since I don’t really like the fact that a critter had to die for me to learn something, but that’s an inevitable consequence of veterinary medicine, methinks. I named mine Horace.
* Gross Warning – material that follows may be too gross for some readers. I warned you. *
Anyway, to start, you make a small incision at the midline of the belly, and then you basically just peel the skin off while turning it inside out. If done properly, there’s no blood involved, because there’s a membrane between the skin and the inside of the body that keeps all the guts and stuff inside.
Once it’s all peeled off, you scrape the fat off the skin and stitch up the mouth from the inside. Then you turn it right side out, stuff it with cotton, and stitch up the belly. Then pin it to a board and let it dry.
I was very proud of my stitches, which you can hardly see. I’m hoping that my sewing ability will translate into live-tissue stitching ability, but that remains to be seen.
I also screwed up the pinning, and pinned mine with splayed feet instead of feet straight out in front and in back (like the rabbit on a stick). That allows a bunch of specimens to be lined up in a drawer. Ah, well. It was pretty good for my first time.
Here is Horace, in all his glory:
Isn't he handsome?
Look ma, no stitches!
