Adventures in Homeschooling (Part 2: Goat Tracheotomy)

As I said before, one of the greatest blessings of homeschooling is being able to stop everything whenever something cooler comes along.

Well, it's not every day that someone comes to your door and invites you to watch a tracheotomy on a goat.  That is definitely cooler than any other schoolwork could possibly be!  So we quit whatever we were doing and hightailed it out the door and across the yard for an impromptu science class.  We arrived just as they were finishing preparing the goat for surgery.

Let me explain that this poor goat was slated for the chopping block anyway.  He was the main course for a party that evening which served as a farewell to the current class of interns.  And anyway, what's the use of wasting a perfectly good goat to only be butchered for supper when it could also be used as a teaching tool?  Someone had the brilliant idea of guiding some residents and interns through the practice of putting in a chest tube and trach.  And someone else had the brilliant idea of letting the homeschool families tag along for the fun!

First things first, they anesthetized the goat.  The poor sap didn't feel a thing.  It was a totally humane procedure from start to finish!

Then one of the residents shaved the area for the chest tube to be inserted.  I kept thinking, "Only in Africa!"

No one claimed to understand goat anatomy as well as human anatomy, but they inserted the chest tube properly and without much difficulty.

After the chest tube was placed it was time to move on to the tracheotomy.  By this point two of my boys had wandered off to climb a guava tree.  But Caleb was still very much interested in what was going on.  He didn't understand what they were doing, so I had to explain why they were now cutting a hole in the goat's throat.  He was rather intrigued!

And the surgery was successful!  The goat was breathing out of the trach, and Caleb put his hand near the tube to feel it.  He exclaimed, "It feels like goat breath!  Blech!"  And yet he was so excited :)

Caleb also stayed around for the butchering.  I wasn't sure he'd want to see that, but he really did, and according to his animated description of it to Eli later, he apparently wasn't too phased by it.  None of the kids were interested in eating the goat that night, but they were well aware that the rest of us were consuming the surgery patient from earlier in the day.  Our boys are well-acquainted with the circle of life, so they were more fascinated than anything.

And let me tell ya, this is certainly something they will remember forever.  And it is not something they will ever see in America!  What a successful day of homeschooling!