Hedgehog intestines stink.

Hiya!

This week has (again) be fairly uneventful. We were warned this might happen, as spring/summer are our busiest seasons (all the newborn animals coming in) and in winter they're just getting released. The most interesting thing that has happened is the escape of the kestrel in the main hospital. We were cleaning out his cage and he'd decided to run for it. Usually the presence of a human is enough to scare the bird to sit in one of the corners, but the kestrel decided to take a leap of faith. Now with pigeons or songbirds this isn't a big issue, but a kestrel (being a bird of prey) is a whole other story entirely. Luckily he was caught quickly and now he's resigned to being in a cage for the next few days.

What was interesting as well was the disections we did yesterday. A colleague disected a jackdaw and a magpie, and I got to disect a hedgehog. Now the intersting thing is dat while birds mainly look the same on the inside as other mammels, there are three distinct differences. One, most birds have a crop (corvids don't, it was interesting to compare the jackdaw to the magpie), which they use to store seeds in (in the case of granivores, all of then have crops as they only eat seeds). This so that the seeds ferment, and can be digested more easily. It smells horrible, though, when you cut it open. Two, birds have airsacks. This helps them stay in the air (obviously). And thirds, birds don't have diaphragms. They can't get hiccups! The hedgehog disection was briliant. It had died of natural causes rather than a lethal injection, so at least his spleen wasn't all swollen (the spleen tries to filter the blood when a lethal injection is given, it swells up and becomes as large as the pancreas). His insides looked rather the same as a human's, which is nice. It smelled even worse than the crop, though, especially the gastrointestinal tract. Half-digested food is no picnic.

As for the school stuff:
This week we were visited by two girls that attend secondary school. Apperently, in the UK, you have to gain some "work experience" durig a certain point in your school career. I had a nice wee chat about the edicational system with one of the girls, a nice source for my portfolio.

As I'll be in Glasgow next week (I have the week off because I've worked so hard the past few weeks), I'll be visiting the university. Again, a briliant opportunity to get some source material for my portfolio.

I also collected some source material to use as reading assignments for my IIA's. Should turn out great!

My word list for this week:
Bollard
Alacrity
Anathema
Mockit
Chuckie

That's it!
Cheerio for now!