You wouldn't know what bone that is ... but she does

The other day we visited a very unusual lab.

The lady who works there is Susan Crockford, a university professor and doctor of biology. In her lab, she has lots and lots and lots of bones of all kinds of animals.

If someone finds a bone and wants to know what animal it is from, they can ask her. Most people who bring bones to get are researchers that want to know the what an animal, for example a sea lion, eat. They collect sea lion poop, clean it until only very clean and dry bones and bone fragments remain, and bring those to my aunt. She then looks at the bones and can tell straight away: I see a swan and some salmon. Next, she goes through her bone collection to find out which kind of swan it was and which kind of salmon.

Her are some of her swan bones:

She even had a huge whale bone, big enough for me to sit in:

Sometimes someone thinks they found a human bone, but according to Susan it almost always turns out to be an animal bone. She has written several books about polar bears.

On the way back home we found two big deer standing in the front yard of a house right next to a busy street, eating grass.

We stopped the car and watched them eat. They didn't really care about us, they were not at all scared.