Dead Rat Spirit

It was last week when GB Class had a Final Lab Test and one part of the assessment is to dissect a mouse. Supposedly. We always 'order' the mice from purchasing department. We never got big enough mouse for dissection. We've ordered mice for more than twice. So this time, I ordered the mice way ahead of time knowing that it's really hard to catch a big enough mouse.

On the exam day, Dina called me from downstairs telling me I should get a cage or something since the mice the purchasing department brought were, not big, huge!
"Ok. Huge. How huge is huge?" I thought.
When I went downstairs, it was HUGE! And there's no mice, but TWO BIG RATS! What's different between mouse and rat? Read "The Tale of Despereaux". Ok, mouse is cute, rat is..nasty. Like Pinky and the Brain, apperance-wise, Pinky is a rat and Brain is a mouse. See the difference?

Anyway, one of the rat was more than 1 Kg, a bit smaller than a cat, and the other one is not that big, my fists size (my hands are small, hope you can imagine). About two hours later they brought a can of mice. I didn't look into it, but I could hear the terrified voice of the mice.

So we started the exam. Dissection. I killed the mice in the can but I left the rats alive. I didn't have the guts to kill them. Robin, one of the student got the small-cat-size rat and killed it. FYI, for dissection, drowning is a good method to kill the mouse or rat; I didn't say it's the best because for me, it's cruel. Chloroform is much faster and considerably painless. Robin used the latter method. The downside of this method is the chloroform he used wasn't killing it enough compare to it's body mass. The rat was still moving but unconscious when he started cutting the skin. My goosebumps are standing reminiscing the events. The organs inside were beatifully visible compare to the small ones.

(I went to eat lunch before finishing this blog and heard a bad news: one of MC ex-faculty's young sons drowned yesterday. Coincide with the story I'm telling? Better be not. He was in my Cradle Roll class..speechless..I think I can't continue writing this post. )