Deer hearts are even better than skulls

For the past several months my mother has been trying to get me to dissect a frog. She even went so far as to buy a dead frog from a homeschool website.

Gag.

Mom finally returned the frog, much to my relief. Unfortunately last week she scheduled a time when we could all go over to the Vaughn's and study a (rather fresh) deer eye and heart.

Both had been previously frozen and had slightly changed in consistency. The eye, for instance, had half turned to rubber and the heart almost looked like....a peach....even though it was red. And soggy. And more then a little bit icky.

I have to tell you, it was very disconcerting to open the refridgerator door and see the heart and that eyeball staring right at you.

Egad...creepy.

After the heart and the eye had been drained in the sink, two cutting boards were taken out and set on the table. Melody and I studied the area around the table to try to find the spot where we would be the furthest away from the raw heart.

....heh.

Nothing against dear Mrs. Vaughn, of course, but her knives are awful. At first we tried to cut open the eyeball with a small knife; but it was so dull that it wouldn't slice through even a little bit. Then mom brought out the butcher knife....

Jeremy, who has gutted a deer before, warned Mom about the eyeball.

"Mom, be carefull or the eyeball will explode!"

She shook that off thinking that he was pulling her leg and trying to make her nervous about cutting open a raw eyeball. It turned out that he was right. When the butcher knife finally penetrated the skin around the eye, a big glob of clear jelly and a bunch of liquid suddenly squirted out all over the place.

Naturally she screamed.

I have to admit, Mom surprised me. She gritted her teeth and dug into that eyeball with no gloves on or anything, which is the exact opposite of what I expected her to do. After she eventually mushed the eyeball to pieces with her fingernails, we turned to the heart.

Oh joy.

During the eyeball demonstration, Jeremy kept digging his fingers up the arterys and into the cracks of that heart. Seriously, that heart looked exactly like a skinless, faceless orc. No, really. It was nasty.

Mrs Vaughn found a better knife and Mom sliced the heart right down the middle. She found the left atrium and the right atrium, the left ventricle and right ventricle and probed and stuck her fingers into every part.

Mom's got guts when it comes to that sort of thing. Fake spiders will make her flip, but when it comes to raw hearts and eyeballs she's a real brick.

Finally, after about 45 minutes we were through. The boys were given the job of bagging up the heart and eyeball and taking it to the trash.

And then Isaac goes and pretty much throws it into my face....

I was happy.

I was thrilled.

At that moment I just about wanted to hug him to death.

and I really mean to death.

I think that I have seen just about enough deer parts and organs to keep me satisfied for the rest of the month of January.

I just hope that Febuary isn't going to be this weird.

Oh, by the way, Mom's not going to let me get away with not dissecting the frog. She's scheduling a time in the spring for me to do it.

I suppose that my next story about wild animals and their blood will be titled 'The Frog Prince'.

And no, I will not kiss the thing. In fact I will do all that I can to stay away from it.

P.S. (I just found out that mom did NOT return the dang frog...I think she put it into the attic for storage....)