Our annual bottom-10 list, in which we salute the men and women who do what no salary can adequately reward

Number 5: Coursework Carcass Preparer
They kill, pickle, and bottle the critters that schoolkids cut up

Remember that first whiff of formaldehyde when the teacher brought out the frogs in ninth-grade biology? Now imagine inhaling those fumes eight hours a day, five days a week. That´s the plight of biological-supply preparers, the folks who poison, preserve, and bag the worms, frogs, cats, pigeons, sharks and even cockroaches that end up in high-school and college biology classrooms.

by Chris Gall:  Chris Gall
At Ward´s Natural Science in Rochester, New York, one of the nation´s largest suppliers of coursework carcasses, an 18-member crew processes dozens of species every year. Insects like fleas and cockroaches are the easiest, according to Jim Collins, the interim supervisor in the company´s preserved-materials department. They´re simply preserved in jars of alcohol. The pigeons and frogs, though, come live from collectors and breeders and must be euthanized on-site (usually in a CO2 chamber for the pigeons and immersion in benzicane, a chemical used to treat tooth pain, for the frogs). Once the deed is done, workers embalm small corpses and inject colored latex into their arterial and venous systems to make identification easier for the kids. Then the specimens are packed in 55-gallon drums to cure for a few weeks before they´re ready for the dissecting table. Collins and his team aren´t put off by the job, although the lab does have a high dropout rate. "We have people who come in and work for a day or two and then say they can´t do it," Collins says. "But most of us enjoy the work."

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25 Comments

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"Go vegan!"? Like blue whales aren't already poster kids for vegan. Or is "go vegan" sort of a cheer, like "Yay team!"? Or maybe just a verbal tic like "you know" and "Have a nice day"?

Because I can't see the relevance of a comment like "go vegan" to the (presumed) concept of producing less smelly bodily waste. Are you really implying that a vegan whale (or any fauna for that matter) would produce less smelly excrement? Your veganity must not extend to beans, legumes, cruciform veggies (broccoli, cauliflower), leafy vegetables such as cabbage and any number of greens, even the good old onion, because there is no significant qualitative difference in the offensiveness of the waste produced by those plants and, say, a burger. Plus those vegetables have the added benefit of producing methane in an animal gut in amounts from merely homeric to life-threatening.

"Go vegan", indeed.

"Go vegan!"? Like blue whales aren't already poster kids for vegan. Or is "go vegan" sort of a cheer, like "Yay team!"? Or maybe just a verbal tic like "you know" and "Have a nice day"?

Because I can't see the relevance of a comment like "go vegan" to the (presumed) concept of producing less smelly bodily waste. Are you really implying that a vegan whale (or any fauna for that matter) would produce less smelly excrement? Your veganity must not extend to beans, legumes, cruciform veggies (broccoli, cauliflower), leafy vegetables such as cabbage and any number of greens, even the good old onion, because there is no significant qualitative difference in the offensiveness of the waste produced by those plants and, say, a burger. Plus those vegetables have the added benefit of producing methane in an animal gut in amounts from merely homeric to life-threatening.

"Go vegan", indeed.

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That's so disgusting. Go vegan!

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more than one story hear kids- pig story last page for sure warrants us all to -go vegan- !!!!!

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what does vegan-ism have anything to do with anything...are you talking about the whale vasectomy?

sorry, i meant elephant vasectomy.



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