Originally published by The River City Review inside the West Sacramento News-Ledger on May 2, 2001.
If you have been walking down the River City halls and have smelled some strange scents, then you are not alone. Everyone else has smelled these disgusting odors, too. The biology and physiology classes have started dissecting again, now that they’ve finished with the plant kingdom. Students will now study invertebrates (animals with no backbone) such as crayfish, grasshoppers and the earthworm.
Also, they will study the vertebrate species (animals with backbones) such as perch, and the grass frog.
“…even though the smell of dissections will eventually fade, the appreciation students have for biology will not.”
~Mr. Logan
The physiology classes have already dissected sheep brains and the eyeballs of sheep and cows. The highlight of this course is the dissection of the fetal pig.
The students will be studying the striking resemblance to the human anatomy. The science department notes that dissections are the most memorable experience in high school for most students. So if you smell some nasty stuff coming out of one of the science rooms, you had better stay clear or you may not like what you smell. Mr. Logan commented, “The hope of the science teachers is that even though the smell of dissections will eventually fade, the appreciation students have for biology will not.”
Editor’s Note: The Review is a high school publication at River City High School in West Sacramento, Calif., for which Daniel Wilson wrote and edited between 2000-2004. The stories published in this category appear in their original form with the only corrections being removal of hyphens for line breaks and the fixing of typos.
Daniel Wilson 