Animals in jars

I guess I am falling a bit behind in posting so it is time for an update!

School goes on as usually. This is the first week of socio classes for second semester and so, as expected, most profs are not yet around! Next week the classes should kick off for sure. The biggest problem is that the students have decided to take this week off essentially because the two weeks before they have been working insanely hard with assignments, exams and in-class tests all crammed together in an attempt to finish up first semester!! But soon classes will get underway. This semester I will even have some classes with female profs!! That will be interesting!!

While classes go on as usual...we seek out our excitement off campus, and sometimes it finds us without us even asking.

Yesterday we had a meeting with a man who directs an organization for orphans in Saint Louis. There is no orphanage in Saint Louis, so this organization works with orphans and abandoned kids by providing them with an extra support base for all of their needs. This man is just really incredible! He has such a big heart and gives all of his time for others...He is also a veterinarian by profession. Which means that in his office in the back corner he has odd specimens preserved in big glass jars. Yes yes, it is as creepy as it sounds.

We walked in to his office and all of us (Lenny, Annie, Genet and I) gasped at these dead animals in jars! It was a little hard to see what they were but none of us wanted to get too close. Then the director came in and told us that before we could talk about the subject at hand (orphans and the association) he needed to explain something to us and show us something! He then went on to explain that in the jars were specimens of abnormal births of various animals. There were siamese twin lambs, a 3 meter long python, a turtle (not sure what the defect was there), the penis of a bull with two shafts, a lamb with two tongues and three nostrils, and the most astonishing....a lamb with the head of a rabbit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am not joking! He explained that all of these were found or brought to him while he studied and worked as a vetenarian. We spent about 20 minutes peering into the jars while he explained how they found these specimens and where in detail and totally nonchalantly.

I think Genet and Annie took pictures, so I will try to post those eventually. I am not even sure what to think. Most of the animals seemed fairly possible...siamese lambs, okay...believable....two tongues, three nostrils, strange but certainly possible...But never have I ever seen anything like the lamb with the rabbit's head. And I looked for stitching to see if it had been tampered with...certainly didn't look like it. I know that this sounds crazy...I don't even know what to think!! All I know is I certainly hadn't expected to see such bizarre things on a normal everday Tuesday afternoon!!!!

And then just as normally as he had introduced his 'specimens' we sat back down and he explained the situation in Saint Louis for orphans and abandoned children!! A situation that is super complex...That story will have to be for another time...

For now I will leave you with the image of the 'miracle of birth' as they call it...

Ligeey Ligeey!!