Who wants to check out what the owl spit out?
Although it may not exactly appeal to everyone, I love checking out owl pellets. What is an “Owl Pellet” you ask. Technically, it is mostly bone and fur or bone and feathers. You see, when an owl eats another animal, it will sometimes swallow smaller animals whole. The owl cannot digest the hair, bones, or feathers though, so it spits that out in a tightly wadded mass called an “owl pellet.”
If you are the type to go looking for things like owl pellets, you can sometimes find them under large trees. Basically, you have to look under where the owl would perch, so large trees often fill that potential.
This one was found by Monster Truck the Pepper and @papa-pepper. It was under a tree on our walk down to our land. Immediately, I knew what it was and soon had the @little-peppers gathered around as well as some neighborhood children.
From the looks of it I could see that it appeared to have some teeth in it, and a hand.
You could also see part of a spine and I believed that a small skull was also inside. Based on the hair color and consistency, at first I thought that that owl had eaten a squirrel. The teeth looked like they could have come from a squirrel too.
As I began to gently pull apart the pellet, I showed the children all the little things that were inside.
We found two bottom jaw bones.
And a couple tiny arm or leg bones.
We even found a few little claws.
Then came the skull. Only the front part of the skull was intact. The hollow part had been crushed into little fragments.
The jaw bones matched up with the skull, and we concluded that the animals was most likely a small wild rabbit, and not a squirrel.
I even pulled the main teeth out of the jaw bones to show the children how they grow in some rodents.
The same thing can be done with the top incisors.
This is basically what the dismantled owl pellet looked like.
It was a really neat hands on learning experience, and just an interesting activity in general. I remember being taught about owl pellets back when I was a boy, and I have always marveled at them. In some ways, they are kind of like mystery presents, because you never know what you are going to get! Our even had a skull in it!
Have any of you ever found an owl pellet? If you did, did you “dissect” it?
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
Until next time…
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