WARNING GROSS - turtle dissection

If you know anything about B, you know that his collecting this turtle was not going to end with him simply taking a look at the turtle and letting her go. It seems we can't get any animal and not make it into some kind of project. This one, he got grandma to help him with. How you might ask? She has told stories of her father bringing home snappers in burlap sacks and skinning them out to eat. Since grandma knows how to do this, B recruited her for help. Can we all say, "grandma gets the award for being the best on this project?!" Anyway....the spent part of an afternoon exploring the biological facts of the turtle he caught in the swamp.

the beginning
cutting the skin to remove the shell and meat (the legs)

removing the underside of the turtle to see the organs

insides

heart

eggs - see I told you it was female (see previous Swamp Thing post for that lesson)

bladder

kidney

lung

ovaries

small intestines

stomach

tracea

cleaned out shell, which B intends to dry and keep - not sure how that's going to work because of the soft shell

At this point, many of the organs have been preserved for B's collection, the meat pieces (legs) have been skinned and are in the freezer (some dream about eating them has been talked about, hopefully I'm doing something else that night!), and the shell is drying. Biology lesson - complete!