Food and Necropsy

The guy in the campus computer store wrinkled his nose at me and grudgingly asked me what he could help me with. "Um, do you guys have any ipod socks?"

I bought my socks and basically ran out of the store with them. Walking through the basement of our Student's Union building was like parting the red sea. Everywhere I walked, people would look stunned, wrinkle their noses and then run away.

I sighed and began my walk home.

It all began in the WEAMS ward as it usually does. This month, my team is on Food & Necropsy which means that everyday, we take out the dead chicks, rotting fish heads, baby mice, ducks, quails, and other such nasty stuff from the freezers to defrost. We also are responsible for tying up the bag of all the leftovers from the day before and bringing the bag into the Necropsy department to dispose of. Very glamourous, I assure you.

I suppose the girl who was responsible for yesterday forgot to throw out the necropsy bag from yesterday or something, so I pop the lid open on the bucket today and everyone in the ward at the time, including myself, almost retched and brought up our breakfasts. It was filled to the brim with rotting mice and chicks and something which looked suspiciously like mouldy salmon.

I closed my eyes for a bit to steady myself, then I picked up the bag but instasntly had to put it down again as it would appear that everything had liquified and that it was leaking out hte bottom of the bag. I won't go into the acrobatics I had to perform to double bag the damned thing without getting it all over the place, but I managed it.

It weighed about 30 pounds and I dragged the bag all the way across the building and down the hall to Necropsy where they were dissecting dead pigs or something equally appetizing.

I got back, sprayed everything down with disinfectant and spent a good 10 minutes washing my hands with Hibitane before finally calling it a day. I went to Frank-the-former-lab-bunny's cage, fed him a treat, then booted it out of there.

I guess the smell of dead stuff clings to the hair and clothes so I must have smelled great by the time I got to the computer store. Nothing like the smell of putrid, liquified baby mice and dead chicks to ensure good customer service. Sigh.

And now, I am off now to eat a well deserved lunch. It amazes me how I can still eat after all that.

Actually, what's even more gross is that i ate all through this one lecture we had about birth defects in which cows, horses, pigs and even humans are born with their backs and arched backwards so that their heads are almost touching their sacrum and there is a giant hole in their bellies so that all their guts and organs are spilling out of them. Very not cool.

The sad thing is that the animals are alive up to the point of birth when you sever the umbilical cord. At that point, they have to start breathing on their own but since their chest is wide open and their lungs are probably all splayed out everywhere, they can't create enough negative pressure to draw in air and they suffocate to death.

Ususally, the mom has problems giving birth to it cus the legs and head all want to come out at once so what you do is either shove a wire cord into the female's uterus and cut up the dead calf in utero before removing the dead fetus piece by piece (very lovely and happy job. why is it that there are more girls than guys in vet school?) or you can do a c-section and just grab out the thing. Apparently happens every 1 in 2000 births. I'm telling you, every single intact one of us is a miracle! (except Paul) j/k.

But I sat there eating my apple as picture after picture flashed up of these guts-splayed-everywhere dead calves and foals and really not caring until I realised how sick the situation was. But I finished my apple anyhow. And it was good.

And we could be discussing the digestive tract or looking at embryos or anything else really disgusting, and people in my class just eat right through it now. The best is the girl in front of me in class who insists on eating her Mott's apple treats and yogurt by drinking and licking it out of the cup and not using a spoon. Personally, I wouldn't want to be drinking yogurt while learning about pus-filled uteruses or lungs. It's totally screwed up.

Well, I am off to eat now. Hope that lovely imagery scars you as much as it has scarred me. My yummy grilled cheese and tomato soup await me.

PEACE OUTSIDE!