Revisiting the whole elementary school owl pellet thing

Don’t ask me how this came up today, but I got going about owl pellets at the family breakfast table this morning.

It may have had something to do with my son’s stuffed owl he’s been carrying around for a couple of days (my wife picked it out for him during our super-touristy visit to the Warner Bros. movie lot, so I’m thrilled to see him playing with it). Whatever hurdles I jumped in my mind to make the connection to pellets, I then recounted having to dig through them in elementary school science class more than once to see what we could find inside, and no one had a clue what I was talking about.

Needless to say, this made me question many aspects of my past. Was pellet dissection common? Do they still do it today? Did I actually come up with this activity by myself, much to the horror of the people around me?

Friends, I’ve sought high and low for answers. If you never did this, marvel at your good fortune. If you’re like many folks I’ve already heard from who did poke a pellet or two, join me on the worst nostalgia trip of all time.

What actually IS an owl pellet?

Full disclosure: we did this for the first time in second grade, and I was beyond convinced it was owl poop. I feel like I would have remembered, with great…