Clubbing baby seals, cats that look like Hitler, and freaking fire alarms

Hey kids!

So I'm back in Saskatomb now and am insanely tired and ready to leave again.

After last blogging, I managed to make it ontime to the international vet students meeting and got to give my shpeel about what we're doing in terms of international stuff here in Saskatomb but then half-way through me chatting, I hear this "BOOOOOOP BOOOOOOOOOOP BOOOOOOOOP"

And I stop and it it just keeps booping and then someone bursts into the lecture hall and goes "FIRE ALARM!"

And then everyone cleared out and I was standing there at the front going "Is this for real?" and I cleared out too.

Then half-way out the front door there's an announcement on the PA system going "Sorry everyone. FALSE ALARM! The construction crew cut the wire by accident. Get back inside."

Well, I went back inside and only 15 ppl returned so I gave the rest of my blurb (though the effect wasn't quite the same considering there'd been like 80 people in there before) and mosied on out to join the crowds for lunch.

As planned, I wore my seashells for the under the sea party and tied green crepe streamers to my hair and looped it around my neck to look like a mermaid. Didn't quite work and I think I came off looking more like a giant piece of kelp. Whatever.

Next morning, I tried not to be too hungover and actually made it to the 9am breakfast that the conference people were providing. I got stuck at a table of kids from the Montreal vet school and they tried not to laugh at my pitiful French. ("Ou est la toilette?")
They were super awesome and one of them was my fellow billetter (he and I had the same host). We agreed that our host's cat looked like Hitler and had such foul farts as to wipe out a 3km radius around our billet's apartment building.

I guess the poor French guy had realised that the cat farted when he was doing yoga in the kitchen that morning and he had his head hanging between his legs and was breathing deeply and trying to relax when the cat came by and just let er rip right in his face.

I almost peed myself. hoo!

And for my wetlab, I got to CLUB A BABY SEAL! THAT'S RIGHT B*TCHES!

Well, it was already dead.

I had signed up for the seal necropsy lab and the guy who was running it kind of does research to see if clubbing seals is humane or not. We got a bunch of dead seals that fishermen had found caught in their nets and before I cut into it, I was handed a real seal club and got to bash its brains out.

I didn't quite get an eyeball shooting across the necropsy room but I did managed to smash the skull and brain quite good with my girly little hit and later, after I'd thoroughly explored the seal's inerts, I skinned the head to see how much damage I'd done.

Surpsingly, from my one girly little blow, I'd managed to crush the skull practically down to the brain stem.

I guess the point of hte excercise was to show that, IF you were to kill a seal (and whether you should be killin a seal or not in the first place is an entirely different debate), clubbing it on the head is one of the most humane ways to do it.

I guess when ppl shoot them, they miss more often and the poor seals crawl away and die much slower and sometimes just get seriously maimed and suffer for days before dying. With clubbing, it's instantaneous (even if you dont get it right smack on the top of the head, you stun it enough to render it unconscious) and there's a much lower chance of the animal getting away and being in pain before you kill it.

So yeah. Other interesting thing I learned about seals is that they have internal testicles (gotta be streamlined and I guess a scrotum causes drag in the water) and they have disgusting round wormies in their stomachs (I found 7 in mine, the other group had several thousand)!

And that's the update from here.

I got to see Salima on my way back from PEI which was awesome. THANKS FOR LUNCH SALIMA! Oh, and by the way, I learned from a vet who volunteers in Kenya that the Kenyan word for 'Farmer' is 'Wakulima' which i think should be your new nickname! WAKULIMA!

Joanne, happy belated conjoined birthday!!!!! AND YOU'RE STILL OLDER THAN ME! MWAHAHAHAHAH!

Sigh. Lab is starting in a bit. I gotta go cut up some dead chickens. BOOOOOOOOO. Last time, my chicken had E. coli in its knees and it was so full of puss that when I squeezed the feet and shins, pus came shooting out of the knee-cap. Yum yum!

Toodles everyone.
Take care.

And yes. My seashells were a big hit.