Pigs and Pinecones

Darwyn and Max both recently participated in their school science fair.  Both kids indicated enthusiastically that they wanted to sign up for the science fair, but when it came time to do the work for the project they were less than enthusiastic.  In the end, I was exhausted and they both had projects.

Darwyn decided she wanted to do her project on pine cones and came up with a list of questions that we set out to answer.  One fun thing she learned was that jack pine cones open in forest fires.  We had a fun backyard fire and tossed some jack pine cones in to see if they would open.  They did.  They also burnt.  The end result did not make a very good science fair display.

Dar and I collected a variety of pine cones and needles for her project.  I scurried from tree to tree enthusiastically showing Darwyn the needles and explaining how to tell them apart.  She did not seem interested in actually identifying them and simply collect copious numbers of pinecones.  Come science fair day we had enough pine cones to plant a forest of unidentified trees.  Many a passer-bye at the fair asked Darwyn which pine cones went with which trees and she would just shrug and cheerfully say "I dunno!"  But she is only in Junior Kindergarten and, in fairness, she answered all of her original questions...which did not include identifying pine cones. She was very proud on science fair day when she got to stand next to her completed project.  She especially enjoyed showing it to her friends and to her teacher.

Max did not choose a project until the last week before they were due.  Gus and I brainstormed many different project ideas, but none ever met his standard.  In fairness, they were mostly things Gus and I liked.  He wanted something original.  Something none of the other kids would do.

Finally, the crunch came and we still had not decided on a project.  I told Max he had to decide NOW.  It so happens that a mom on the home school network had bought fetal pigs in bulk for dissection and was looking to get rid of some.  I declared to Max that we should dissect a fetal pig and he reluctantly agreed.  He decided his project would be on bodies and we could look at the pigs organs.  He also came up with bringing some animal bones that we have collected over the years and putting a few tissue samples under our microscope for people to look at.  The result was a pretty impressive project...unfortunately, most of it was by me.  Max did type up the text himself and (mostly) make his own poster.

The day we went to dissect the pig, I could barely tear the kids form the computer.  They wandered over, looked at the pig and declared that it was cute and that it stank (which was true...it smelled strongly of formaldehyde).  Then they wandered off again.  Project finished.  But they did get interested when we saw the inside of the pig and made a valiant effort at identifying things.  Max was especially excited to cut into the brain (which wound up looking like indistinguishable mush), and the eye.

On the day of the fair Max's project received lots of attention.  People were very interested in staring at pig intestines and asked us repeatedly if we had really dissected a pig.  The school arranged for a "judge" (there weren't scores or winners) to come ask Max questions about his particular project.  The judge was very impressed and asked Max what had inspired him to do such a cool project.

Max: Welllll....I couldn't decide what to do and finally it was the last minute and mom said I needed to do something NOW.  So we just had this pig in the freezer and mom said, 'why don't we cut it up' and that I didn't really have a choice because there was no more time.

....hunh....so much for presentation.  I think the judge thought I was a little strange for randomly storing fetal pigs in my freezer.  Upon hearing Max's explanation he asked me, "Oh!  You must be a biologist"  thinking, I'm sure, that I would have supplies from work.

Me:  No.  I just got it from this other mom that ordered them in bulk.

The judge left quickly.

Max with the judge and certificate

Darwyn shows her project to her teacher