April Blogging Challenge: Z is for Zoology

I DID IT! I managed to write a post for each letter on the day it was supposed to. And thank God I'm done, because writing six days a week was killing me. Seriously. That's a lot of blogging people. But I made it, I did it, and I managed to snag a few new followers. Although it appears I lost one in the last couple days, but oh well. So, to the new followers that I haven't welcomed, Welcome! Thanks a ton for stopping by and commenting. I hope you continue to stick around. *hint hint*

Onto today's post: Zoology. This was one of my favorite classes at Chico State. It was hard, but I enjoyed it. Well, most of it. I didn't really enjoy the spiders we had to look at; I didn't give a snit if they were dead - they were still spiders. Seriously, someone near me dropped a spider out of the little dish they were in, and I jumped and screamed like it was alive and going to kill me or something. (Sad, I know).

Sharks are also quite disgusting. Did you know they still excrete their slimy coating even after they're dead? I didn't either until I had to dissect one. No, it's wasn't a big one. It was one of those small shark species. But let me tell you, a week left in a drawer made that lab room quite rank. Seriously. None of our dead things were kept in coolers (which might have been slightly more logical); they were kept in drawers. Each lab section had their own set of drawers, and then we had to put our names on our own drawers so we knew were our lovely leftovers were. We would hate to unknowingly grab someone else's screw up. But, yes, the sharks got quite rank. And even wearing double or even triple layer gloves on did not prevent said shark stink from permeating those gloves. You'd leave the room smelling a bit like dead shark stink. Yeah. Not something I'd go marketing to the masses, that's for sure.

We had to learn dog and cat skeletons. We had to do the frog. Seriously? I started dissecting frogs in like 3rd or 4th grade. Why must kids dissect one every year of their scholastic lives? It's not like the frogs change or anything. (Oddly enough, every time I type the word frog, for some really strange reason I want to type like this: frong. Don't ask.) Same with squid - they are all the same. Not to mention we had to do other species of fish, other than the sharks. Luckily, the other fish didn't smell nearly as bad as those sharks.

One of the hardest things to study for was the fetal pig towards the end of the semester. We had to know the respiratory and the circulatory systems. Luckily educators are smart. These pigs had these systems dyed blue and red so us confused students could keep them separated in order to learn them. So, we had colorful piglets.

I know some people have a hard time with people (scientists or educators) raising animals for science like that, just so evil people like us science students can cut them up. I can understand their side, but how else are we to learn? Growing up, I knew kids who couldn't handle dissecting animals in biology. I knew kids whose parents refused to let them do so. I was usually the kid who thought it was gross but did it anyway. I was also usually the kid who was the least grossed out by all of it and being that my other lab partners were far too grossed out, I had to touch it or do it by myself because the others were bigger pansies than myself. By the time I was in college, I was among pre-vet students, so I was among "friends". Some of you would be shocked by some of the things I did in class - and not Zoology.

Maybe another day I'll gross you out with those stories.

And that my friends, concludes this year's April A-Z Blogging Challenge!