Raptor Biofacts Project

Warning - parts of this post might be gross. Today I went to another naturalist's home in Cambridge to prepare biofacts for the Wildlife Science Center. I didn't really know what I was getting into except it involved hawks, owls, scalpels, Styrofoam, and pins. We prepared legs, wings, tails and skulls to be shown in nature classes. Most of the birds came from the Raptor Center. We all looked at the Great Horned Owl ears. They were hard to find under all those feathers. I was surprised how big the ear canals are. I started with a Great Horned Owl leg. I peeled back the feathery skin down the leg to the sharp black claws. Owls have feathers all the way down their leg. Hawks have bare legs. After I peeled the skin back I used a scalpel to cut off the meat. Owls have meaty little legs. I stacked up the pieces of red meat on my cutting board. Then I pulled the skin back up over the bone. I set the leg so that the claws stuck into the Styrofoam. Owls can move 2 toes to the front and 2 to the back. Hawks have 3 in front in 1 in back. I stuck a pencil in the foam and tied the leg so that it bent forward as owl legs do. My friend will let it dry for 3 weeks. Now that most of the meat is out it won't smell bad. Then she will freeze it again for a week to kill any bugs or eggs left in the feathers. Me - a vegetarian who cannot stand to cut chicken did this. Was it gross ? Yes, a little gross but if handling this owl leg turns some kid on to the wonder of nature, it was worth a little discomfort. I think I may have inhaled some owl feathers today. My next project was a juvenile red tail hawk wing. I pulled the skin back from the spot that looks like a shoulder but is actually the elbow. I used the scalpel to remove the extra meat. I pulled the skin back up and sewed the edges of the skin together with thread to cover the bone. I spread the wing feathers wide to show the beauty of the shapely feathers and pinned it to Styrofoam to dry. I didn't do any tails but the other women in the group did. My last project was the skull of a long eared owl. I used a scissors to cut the feathers off the head. Man, what a mess. We had feathers flying all over the place. This owl had surprisingly little meat on his head. By now I was dancing along the line of having gone too far past my comfort zone. The smell was getting to me. I was wearing gloves but didn't want to handle any more small pieces of owl meat. I knew removing the eyes was beyond what I wanted to do. The woman next to me announced, "I got your eyes out!" I looked at the HUGE eyes that took up almost the entire skull and my stomach turned just a little. They were just pulling a turkey vulture out of the box of frozen birds when I announced I had to go. What an interesting afternoon!