Day 2- disassembling, cleaning

Today we got back to work at taking our rabbit apart. We froze it again in the meantime. Once again it was a great day to do this on the front yard, although people passing looked at us strangely. We were finally able to separate it into smaller pieces we could each work on.

Allison focused on the skull a lot, including getting the brain out. This was difficult and needed a combination of a knife, toothpick, fingers, and water. Also, taking out the tongue was a joint effort because it was in there pretty deep, which was kind of gross. Janessa worked on the spine, pelvis, and ribs, which were difficult because of how small and fragile everyting was.



We took off the limbs, which made it much easier to handle the rest of the body as we worked. We left them soakining just some warm water for a while to loosen up the meat and slimy stuff around the bones.

We brought out an old toothbrush to do some more scrubing at the bones. Again, we had to be careful. Everything is so delicate!

Considering how much meat we thought we removed last time, there was still a lot more.

Here is the scull soaking once Allison spent a lot of time cleaning it. We thought it now looks pretty cool, expecially the teeth.

Here is the tray with most of the pieces laid out on it. The spine is still all connected from the pelvis to the neck, which we will deal with next time. Once Janessa carefully removed all the ribs we kept them in order by taping them down. Unfortunately, some were already broken or cracked. We will have to glue those back together.

While working on these other parts, we let the limbs soak in some water with baking soda. Each limb is in its own cup to keep them seperate. We took apart all the bones, including the big legs ones and the tiny toes. They were quite greasy and will probably need a bit more scrubbing or soaking later.

Another 4 hours of work later, this is how far we got. Probably next time some more cleaning will be required, although we feel pretty good about the state of most bones right now. The spine will be tricky, it seemed like all the meat was removed, but they didn't seem to separate naturally and we don't want to just rip things apart. We will also keep those bones in order, and put them on a wire. We can hopefully start some gluing too next time. Overall, pretty successful day.

Day 1- skinning, gutting, boiling

Today we got to work on our rabbit. On Allison's front lawn. A little bit sketchy, but the sun was so nice it only made sense. Where to start? If you've never taken an animal apart before, starting is the hardest part! We had to cover the face in order to finally make that first cut.

Once we got going on it, it wasn't quite as bad as we thought. Nowhere near as easy as the internet made it sound, but some sections of skin/fur peeled off quite nicely. I compared this to peeling an orange.

We had to be really careful on the feet. There are so many tiny bones, and we eventually just had to leave some fur on them for the time being. Here are the ears and a part of the eyeball. Some parts were more difficult to cut out than others, physically and emotionally! The rest of the eye was quite jelly-like, and made an oozing mess all over the place.



Then we opened it up to reveal all the guts. Some stuff we tried to identify, others was just a mess. We had been warned not to break the intestines because they would be filled with poo and it would stink. However, we opened them right away but it wasn't too bad, it was still partially frozen. Slightly unconventional, but it worked. So we had a nice pile of guts and fecal matter. Crazy how much was inside that rabbit.

Then with as much off of the rabbit as possible, it was time to boil it the first time. Up to this point took about two hours. The grossest part complete!



After boiling it for about an hour and a half we took it out and removed as much meat as we could. By now it did not feel as much like a rabbit or a nasty dead animal, it was just some cooked meat and bones. No eating this meat though!

So here is what we had left at the end of day 1. We felt like we had accomplished a decent amount in the hours we had, and the worst is behind us. In terms of grossness that it; it's obvious that this project is a huge undertaking, and that many more hours will be needed to carefully take it apart, clean all the bones, and glue them back together. Next week we will continue to work!



The Project Begins

For our big biology project, we (Allison and Janessa) will be doing a skeleton reconstruction. We happened to come across a dead rabbit that was in good shape, so this is the animal we wil be working with. For school we will need to track out progress and this blog will be where we do this. With photos, videos, and write-ups, we will update it as we work. This is guaranteed to be huge amounts of work, but it is also sure to be an interesting learning experience...