Posted on 11/14/2007 4:33:30 AM PST by laotzu
HUNTSVILLE, Ark. — A high school teacher killed a raccoon with a nail gun after discovering the planned subject of a skinning demonstration was alive.
Superintendent Alvin Lievsay said a student's parent promised to bring in a raccoon for the exercise, but surprised teacher Jerick Hutchinson by bringing the animal in a live trap. Lievsay said Hutchinson, "who used to work in a slaughter house," took the animal outside to the back of his truck Friday and shot it with the nail gun. Lievsay said no students witnessed the raccoon's death.
"He used the nail gun to, as they say, to dispatch the animal," Lievsay said. "It wasn't like he held a nail gun against the head of a cute little animal in front of the class."
Hutchinson used the dead raccoon to demonstrate how to skin the animal and to examine the contents of its stomach. Lievsay said only one student asked not to attend the skinning.
Lievsay said officials at Huntsville High School later talked with Hutchinson and told him not to kill animals on school grounds. The superintendent said Hutchinson, one of two agriculture teachers at the school about 30 miles east of Fayetteville, also would provide more detailed lesson plans.
"He does a great job. The kids love him," Lievsay said.
He is in the third grade now so it is about time for him to start learning the fine art of cleaning and gutting the kill himself.
Assuming no air compressor in the truck, to power the nail gun, I’d suspect he used a Paslode framing nailer, which can fure a maximum 3.5” nail, available in galvanized, steel, ringshank or plain shank. For my part, under 7 yards, the 3” steel ringshank would be the projectile of choice...
And, don’t forget some grits as a side dish...
I went to a small local slaughter house as a kid, where you’d take your cow or hog to have it butchered. It was a real eye opener for a small kid..............chain saws, meathooks, large men dressed in rubber aprons and hip boots wading around guts and blood. I watched a cow go from standing to hanging as a side of beef in about five minutes. Those guys work fast. It was a cold day and the meat was still steaming and jerking while hanging on the hooks. Kids (4th-5th grade) ought to take FIELD TRIPS to places like this!...................
Most people had a large cast iron pot or container with a fire around it to heat it up for scalding........
Out here in Cal-e-for-nee, we have these her classes called “ag-ree-kul-cher.” In ‘em classes we teach ‘em kids ‘bout butcherin’ ‘n stuff. ‘Em kids sees ‘em cows kilt ‘n ‘em hogs kilt in real life ever’ year. ‘Em kids come’a talkin’ in their next class ‘bout watchin’ ‘em cows ‘n hogs jes’ die.
Seriously, we have ag classes in which the students learn about butchering animals. It’s not a PC class: It’s a PRACTICAL class. Many of the students request a “leave” from other classes to participate.
Meat is not a magical product. It is made from dead animals. These animals do not obligingly die by themselves.
Yep, there is no shock or horror for kids when they’re introduced to the food chain early on. To them, it’s just another fact of life.
Let ‘em watch cartoons of talking animals for years and shelter them from where meat actually comes from, and that’s the disservice to your kids when they finally come upon some real life stuff.
When I was about 3 or 4, the folks across the street in our small Iowa town kept chickens in a little coop in their yard. I’ll never forget Martha, the clan’s mom, sprinkling a little feed and then grabbing one bird, laying it on a tree stump and whacking its head off with a hatchet. The fact that the chicken ran around headless for five minutes really impressed me...
Okay, but what's a "speciman"? An Italian astronaut?
The teacher's mistake was not using a captive bolt gun to dispatch the 'coon. He could have gotten two class demonstrations for the price of one.
Also reminds me of what happened in the Home Economics class. One year a boy took the class (highly unusual). He was a backwoods kid (and that’s saying something for that place and time). The girls all teased him during the year, but he got his revenge when they all did their big dishes at the end of the year. The rule was that everyone had to eat everyone else’s dishes and he took full advantage. He cooked up raccoon and opossum with fish head soup.
In fact my youngest son in 3rd grade goes to what is called "weekday" every Wednesday. They walk the kids out of class to a church just across the street and they have nondenominational bible study class (opt out to anyone who wants to).
He comes home every week with bible verses he has to memorize for the next week. I bet you don't have anything like that in a public school over in Cal-e-for-nee anymore...
Death of animals is part of life. They are killed so we can eat them. If you eat meat but can't watch or think about animals being killed then you are the worse kind of hypocrit. If this teacher was to skin and dissect this animal did the kids think it was born dead and no one had to kill it? Our schools are becoming the worse type of nanny state indoctrination centers. I know some of you will flame me, but that merely means you are wimps also. /rant
And you are making a statement as if I wrote it. Why?
Reading 101, my statement was about the word as used by the writer at the paper. It did not address one thing the teacher may are may not have done.
What you wrote was: You only call it a specimen if you are a biology teacher and its a biology class. My followup question above, which I'll rephrase to make it clearer, is, Isn't "specimen" also the proper term for an animal in an ag class?
Reading 101, my statement was about the word as used by the writer at the paper. It did not address one thing the teacher may are may not have done.
The comment about the captive bolt gun wasn't in reply to what you wrote. It was just an irrelevant aside.
ping
Give that teacher a gold star for real world intelligence!
ping
I was on a mission trip in the Caribbean years ago, and we went down to the meat market to get a chicken.
We rolled up on a big cage with two guys in it, along with about fifteen chickens. We ordered one. One guy grabbed the nearest chicken, cut it’s throat and threw it headfirst into a plastic bucket. When it stopped moving, he threw it into the plucking machine, and a couple minutes later, they handed us a fresh chicken in a little plastic bag. A good dinner, as I recall.
We live such a fake life here sometimes.
Exactly right. I remember when my oldest was only about 3 years old. I brought home a nice whitetail buck to hang up and skin in the garage. When she saw the dead animal laying in the bed of my druck, she looked at it and said, "daddy, is that deer okay?" I said, "no darlin', that deer is dead." She asked "how did it die?" I said, "I killed it with a gun so I can feed our family." She just gave me a look of acceptance and went inside. Venison is still one of her favorite dishes.
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