A Poke in the Eye

I'm proud to say that there aren't many things that I will not try at least once.  Skydiving?  Sure.  Eat live bugs?  Done it!  While my moral compass doesn't exactly point north, believe it or not I do draw the line somewhere.  Today I realized exactly what that line was, and I can admit that I will not draw blood from a pig.  Why a pig?  Because to make a pig bleed you need to do a blind stick with a 14 gauge needle IN THE CORNER OF THE EYE.

While not much grosses me out [cow butts anyone?] I do feel slightly uncomfortable attempting to stick a needle into the eye of a SCREAMING and flailing  pig without having any clue where the vein I am aiming for is.  Therefore, the majority of us stood back and watched while Dr. T and Dr. Emma [it was her first time doing this too] essentially stuck pins into the eyes of future bacon.

      [I'm pretty sure this is a phobia in humans]

While the vets did what some countries consider as torture, the rest of us less sadistic folk castrated the boars/piglets at the two separate farms we visited.

[Don't start drooling yet, he's only sleeping]

After the pigs, we visited the farm of American veterinarian Jerry Stevens who has lived in Belize for the last 16 years attempting to breed Barbados Black Belly Sheep.  Dr. Stevens taught at NC-State for a little while and helped invent urine culture paddles for urine testing.  We played with his sheep and picked his brains for a while before heading back "home" to finish up our presentations [which we are presenting tomorrow] while watching Gossip Girl [Dr. Emma watched it with us and laughed at our procrastination/multi-tasking skills].

It's my last full day here tomorrow, and after taking our exam and doing presentations, we are going horseback riding one last time before we go out to dinner with all of our professors.

Cheers! [I have to STUDY]