Snake Family Dissection

On the way home from work one evening, Dad slammed on the brakes, pulled onto the shoulder, leaped from the car and came back with a big snake.

I was seven.  

Its intestines were protruding through its scales so Dad carefully washed the outer innards and shoved them back in.  The snake died after a time in his new barrel home and Dad wanted the skin so he did a dissection while I looked on over his shoulder.  Fascinating experience.  

On the way home from work on the bicycle the other day, I happened upon a Garter snake that had just been struck by a car.  It seemed that its head had been crushed and blood was flowing from its eye and mouth.  

I picked it up and it wrapped itself around a finger so I took it home and showed it to the boys....
 The snake was probably dead at 3 pm when I picked it up but it was still reacting to our caresses so I placed it in the garden in the sun and came back after my nap.  No reaction to anything so I figured it was dead.

Father and Son (Misael)

21" long and 2" in girth

We donned our goggles and started in.

The razor quickly sliced through the scales - tic tic tic - and was really easy to control with minimal overcutting.  

Damage limited to the head plus three inches

The innards came out with little effort

and left the skin attached to the musculoskeletal structure

The tiny teeth snagged my gloves many times while working around the head but I soon had the separation I was working for.

The heart is at the T to the right in the picture above.  The lung is the tube angled toward the bottom of the picture.  The stomach begins just after the lungs separate and the intestines continue to the left.

Then I cut into the intestines.  There was a partly digested worm and a mostly digested something else beyond it.  The off-white egg sac opened to reveal six eggs either unfertilized or quite early in their development. 

The recent meal and six eggs

squeezing the intestines pushed out the poo

I had done this about 8 years ago and I still have the skin so I wanted to expand my collection.  I started about six inches from the head, separated the skin from the skeleton and meat with the blade, and started peeling them apart.  The skin was flexible and easily separated from the body once it got started.

It works better with more nails

Salted and left in the sun to cure

But the most bestest part of ever was when Elías exclaimed "Mirá, Papi.  Todavía se mueve!"  To which I responded "No puede ser.  Está muerto."  But sure enough, my four year old had seen the still-beating heart outside the body.  I excitedly called my wife, the underexuberant camera girl for this experiment, and she filmed the heart.  I then severed the heart from everything and it kept pumping away.

The heart still beats two hours after death

Amazing.  And yummilicious.  It don't taste like no chicken I ever ate.  

All in the name of continuing and expanding family tradition while learning something new every day.