This Chicken's a Little Dry

I'm just going to warn you that if you have a weak stomach this may not be for you. It's about a recent homeschool project that, while helpful and memorable, was by far the most disgusting activity we've ever done. The boys and I spent the last three months mummifying a chicken after we read about the ancient Egyptians doing the same to their deceased. We started with a store-bought, whole chicken. Then we cleaned it and packed it in salt in a large Ziploc. I'll spare you the nastiness of raw chicken photos but let me just say it was nauseating to take that thing out of the bag every few days to repack it with fresh salt. When I told the boys that people used to have to do this with their loved ones' bodies, Andy exclaimed, "You mean they put them in bags!"

After the chicken was essentially dehydrated and half its original size, we removed it from the bag and shook off all the salt. The boys chose spices to mix with olive oil, which we used to massage into the bird so it wouldn't smell so offensive. It actually worked.

Here they are with the chicken on the driveway trying to decide who's going to touch it first:

Jonah drew the short straw and Andy almost threw up just watching him pick it up:

See, I told you the fragrant oil worked. Don't they look like they're having fun and breathing freely?

Then came the best part - wrapping the delightful specimen in glue-soaked cloth:

They finally both really got into it and wrapped the bird up tight. Jonah kept insisting he needed more "toilet paper" but eventually learned the word "gauze".

Then, because it hasn't rained much at all for weeks, we set it on the driveway to dry and forgot about it. Then it rained and rained and rained. Oops. Again, I'll spare you those photos. Suffice it to say that you should be happy my boys aren't planning on becoming undertakers.