Good Monday to you all…
This is just a short little update post to let you in on the mediocre mundaneness that is my life. Yes, I am still walking and running, having not actually torn anything resembling a ligament or a tendon, but I missed my long run Sunday! Instead I was on a field trip with my forensic biology class. We were forensically excavating a dead calf that had been buried in a field for 8 or so months. It was good times!
Some things that I learned for from our excursion:
1) Doing anything forensically takes many times longer than anything that you see on TV. We worked far faster than what a real team would do and it still took us hours just to expose the corpse. Everything must be meticulously documented, photographed, sketched, logged, etc etc etc. Cases are not solved in hours…
2) If you want a corpse to decompose in an appreciable amount of time, do not bury it in dry soil, two feel down. Once we had exposed the body, there was very little decomposition. There was certainly an interesting odour about the corpse, but there was still plenty of tissue remaining. In short, it was pretty gooey. We did not try to remove the body for fear of the mess that would have made. The reason little decomp occurred is that the conditions were anaerobic, or lacking oxygen. That meant that there was no insect activity and little bacterial action. We left the hole exposed to the air, covered with plywood, so when we go back in 470 we should see some good decomp and insect activity.
I am still teaching for the month of June, and the students are trying to stay focused enough to get through their exams. I have my own exams coming up to worry about! A lab exam on Friday and a final next Thursday. Guess I had better start studying…
Not much new and exciting otherwise. Get to see my sister, her husband and my niece next weekend – should be fun!
Thats all for now folks
Be Kind
Scott
