Real Life Science

Lately I feel as if our home is one big science experiment…Joel has had the kids walking around outside in socks and then try to grow grass on/in them…setting traps to capture nocturnal insects…Dara’s been dissecting a mouse with Viki…Dade and Dara have both had chameleons to care and feed…Dade had 2 snails for awhile (who would have thought that a snail would need a bath?)…both kids are learning how to carve rocks from one of our short-termers…Dade even had a toad for awhile who would eat grasshoppers for him…as you can see it’s been exciting around here…here are a few picture to prove it! (keep in mind that it’s sometimes difficult to portray excitement in pictures)

Here’s Dara’s chameleon named Texas…

Unfortunately Dara’s cat ate Texas…so now they are both sharing Dade’s chameleon, Pastel…

I recommend chameleons as pets as they are easy to keep clean, are very quiet, and are fascinating to watch.  The downside is feeding them.  We have no pet store to purchase crickets and other insects, so we get to physically take the chameleon to the prey.  It’s actually fun to watch (at least I think so – Ruth has adamantly refused to ever find even a bit of love in her heart for the chameleons!).  We hold Pastel near a fly and with a flick of its tongue, the fly is gone!  I have a very short video of Dade’s chameleon eating a fly…I’ll try to put it on Facebook since I can’t get it on here…

Dade’s snail was a medium sized “Giant African Snail”…it was fun to watch it for almost 2 weeks before he decided to let it go…in the end they aren’t all that exciting as pets…Dade had a baby snail too…so they wouldn’t be lonely…If you are thinking that you’d like to learn about the anatomy and daily habits of a snail, you’ll need a suitable habitat.  Here is how we made out snail habitat…we took a large water bottle (I think it’s 10 or 15 liters) and cut off the top…laid it on it’s side…added dirt, grass, a rock, and some lettuce for food…the “door” was the top of the bottle inserted backwards…hope that makes sense!These have been our live science projects (I’m sorry I didn’t get pictures of the toad.  He jumped around a lot at night and so we didn’t keep him long, but it was fun to watch him eat grasshoppers!)…now onto the no-longer-alive science…

A couple of weeks ago David, our guard, found a dead something near the garden.  He called me outside in the morning: “Mama Dade (that’s what David always calls me,his son calls me “Mama Jill” which would literally mean that I’m my own mother), I have found something you haven’t seen yet!”  He was right…it was an intact rodent of some kind.  Since the cats, or whatever killed it, hadn’t eaten it or torn it up; Dara said, “I want to dissect that!”  So, much to Ruth’s surprise, she put it in a baggy in the fridge – to keep until after school. 

After a bit of searching on the internet, we found out that it was an African Pygmy Dormouse.  When 3 o’clock rolled around our friend Viki showed up just to say “hi”.  Viki is a medical resident at the hospital studying ENT (Ears, Nose, Throat).  She was super excited about being a part of the dissection and did it much more professionally than I would have ever dreamed.  Do you recognize the knife, Papa?  It’s the Swiss army knife you gave her.  I’ll spare you all the pictures of the insides…just know it was great for Dara, and she has saved her favorite organs (they’re in small plastic containers in the freezer)!  

And, last picture, here’s Dade carving something…can you see how hard he’s concentrating?  They both love doing this and the art classes taught by the wife…such a blessing!

I wish I had pictures of the experiments Joel and the kids have been doing.  They’ve had a good time with Joel as the science teacher.  He puts such time and thought into their lessons.  It’s a huge blessing for all of us.  I’ll try to get better about documenting them.  As far as I know, the next neat thing scheduled is the almost total solar eclipse we’ll see here on Sunday…can’t wait to appreciate more of what our amazing God has created!