Sea Star Guts

This week in Bamfield Club, Mr. Riemann and Ms. B brought out funky, starshaped blobs, called Sea Stars.

Then, we were all handed gloves, and a pair of Glasses. The excitement was unbearable!

And, to confirm our hopes, we found ourselves holding scalpels, surgical scissors, and a dissection tray.

The suspense was unbearable.

We waited, waited to slice the stars and discover the disgusting innards of the creatures.

Finally, we got the good-to-go and started slicing our stars.

The first step was cutting off a leg. Inside, there was a goopy digestive tract, along with.... a spine?!

That's right, sea stars have spines!

It was so tiny, but still strong. (believe me, I know. It took 3 minutes to saw through that dang spinal cord!)

Then we flipped our battered friend over, and examined his mouth, a circle in the middle of the five legs.

All the while this was happening, goopy greenish-yellow guts were spilling out, moving slow as mollases.

I think it smelled like watermelon.

Now came the fun part... Cutting the top off.

We slashed the top skin off the sea star, eager to see what was inside.

Now that I think about it, we were almost psycopathic, eagerly awaiting the massacre of a dead corpse.

Inside, a circle of bone extended to the spines, that went to the end of each leg. Guts spilled out, and the infamous 'dead-juice' flooded the dissection tray.

I still think it smelled like watermelon.

We named our poor subject 'Soggy' because he was so mushy and goopy when we got him.

We sawed off all five legs, prodded, poked and sliced our unlucky fellow.

I wanted to eat him.

Now, Soggy rests in peace in the lovely garbage can.