What do you do when school has become a tad too tedious for your nine year old?

Owl pellets!

Owl pellets are Neve’s favorite school activity.  If you’ve never heard of them (brace yourself) – they are dried owl vomit.  When an owl consumes its meal of a mouse or bird or mole, it digests the soft parts and vomits back out the hard bits – the bones, fur, etc.  The vomit can then be dissected by adventurous school children to see what the owl in question ate.

Although Maddie and Emily refused to take part this year (having done it both once before) Oona was more than happy to jump in and try it out.

The girls were disappointed that none of the pellets contained evidence of a small bird, but excited for each little bone and bit of rodent that they did find.

We’ll be checking out some books about owls to round out the fun, and it’s made me think about how much I love hearing the owls that live in our woods and spend all spring and summer hooting away the evenings.