Once Upon a Dissection...

“Today we will be studying the muscles of the mink. You will split into groups of three, and each group will receive its own mink to dissect…”

As Dr. Norskov continued with his little introduction to lab, my mind was far from the lecture...

Taking another chomp on my mint-flavored chewing gun, my attention was riveted to what lay on the counter. In my mind, when he had said “mink”, I was picturing this cute, furry, long-tailed, little creature rolling around with a ball in the pet store. There, sealed in a plastic bag, lay a very un-lifelike looking grayish mass, partially floating in what Jessie (one of my lab partners) termed “mink juice.” It had a strange resemblance to something I had once seen packaged in Saran wrap in the grocery store… or maybe that was just my imagination.

As they removed the dripping, grayish mass from the bag, the pungent scent of formaldehyde permeated the air.

*blink*…*blink*blink*… “Oh no you don’t! If you even think about passing out right now…” I fixed my gaze on the lab book in front of me… “Come on… you can handle this… you’ve seen 2D road-kill before!... not to mention all the deer carcasses our collie used to drag into the front yard during hunting season…” The awful scent remained, but after a second my vision cleared and I was back to “normal.”

“I’ll go pick us out a real good looking one!”, I volunteered, as my two other lab partners donned their latex gloves. Digging through the barrel of plastic-rapped mink carcasses, I pulled out one of the smelly, fat covered, grayish masses and pronounced him ours. I think I saw him smile…

While returning to our table, I passed another group that had just picked out their mink as well. Unfortunately not everyone shares my sense of humor, as my comment of, “Boy, you picked a cute one!”, was met by protesting squeals of, “Oh sick! And we’re just about to cut him up!”

We got ourselves a tray, scissors, tweezers, tags, and some blunt-tipped probing things, and set to work. Cutting open the bag, we pulled out our little creature who was indeed grinning ear to ear, rather ominously. Teeth were about the only recognizable feature the poor little fellow had left on his face.

“Awww look… he’s smiling at you!” My lab partners (Jessie and Emily) chuckled, as we laid the little fellow face-up on the tray.

Our first task was to clear away the fat. Greasy globs of yellow adipose tissue clung tightly to the underlying muscle as we poked, prodded, and pulled. Upon reaching the thighs we came to the conclusion that our mink was most probably a female, due to the excess amount of adipose tissue in that area, (further investigation proved this hypothesis wrong.). It was at this point, (after making a comment about the fat tissue looking an awful lot like my chewing gum), that I decided to dispose of mine, as it was losing its minty flavor, and… yeah… it just had to go.

After exposing the muscle, our next task was to identify and tag certain muscles from a list we were given. “Sternomastoid, Pectoralis major, Pectoralis minor, Serratus ventralis, Transverse abdominis, Clavotrapezius, Gluteus maximus, Gastrocnemius…”, and the list went on. As Emily labeled the tags, Jessie and I poked and prodded, uncovering the various muscles. Upon locating one from the list, we would stab two holes in the muscle and slide a tag through, looping and cinching the tag.

Once finished, our mink resembled an already-marked-down, half-off sale price piece of clothing at an end-of-season closeout. The writing on the tags was only partially legible as most of it had been smeared off while cinching the tags, but upon inspection by the TAs’ our mink was pronounced good.

Then it was time to say good-bye to our furless little friend. We returned him to his plastic bag of mink juice, and began cleaning up our area. Using a paper towel, we scooped up all the scattered chunks of muscle fiber and fat tissue. I casually mentioned that the stuff had a striking resemblance to veggie burger… But once again, my appreciation for the lighter side of things was not so equally shared by all those around me.

When lab was finished that day, I stepped out of the room with a new appreciation for what an awesome Creator we have, and also for fresh air. Now it was on to other classes, other appointments, other fragrances…

Reaching up to brush a strand of hair out of my face, I caught the pungent scent of formaldehyde still lingering on my hand. At least for a couple more hours I would not be forgetting that day’s A&P lab…

-Shannon


(The result of too much A&P study and lemon-lime chewing gum...)