See comments for exciting trivia questions which the kids created about the Western Redcedar.
While walking through the woods looking for our tree to peel, Lonna and Eugene came across the remains of predation. The skeleton was completely laid out with a tiny skull the size of my fist about a foot in front on the spine shown below. We were also able to see jawbones, teeth, and hooves. Fur lay all around the remains, and very thickly in two different spots five and ten feet away. A front leg bone was broken. One of our mentors guesses that it was a four- to six-month-old faun chased and killed by a cougar... the fatal snap on that front leg after tussling in those two fur-laden spots. The faun put up a good fight. This scene was macabre and sad, but also a very interesting lesson in evolutionary biology.
The next step after the gathering is to peel the outer layer of bark from the inner layer of bark. This should be done outdoors, but we did it in the classroom while watching episodes of Nickelodeon's Avatar. We tried to clean up the big pieces, but the classroom carpet is now brown shag. Apologies go out to our Maintenance staff.
