Reminded me of the time back in high school when my (1 year older) brother got the proverbial 'bright idea'. Somehow, we wound up in the same biology class, and he thought it would be cool for us to reconstruct a chicken skeleton for extra credit. Mom, being the supportive parent that she was, agreed to help get the meat off. How hard could it be? And anyway, our family could eat the meat...

First, we had to find a specimen- you can't shop at the supermarket for a complete chicken- but in a farming community, that wasn't too difficult. Next thing we discovered: there's a big difference between picking yummy bits off of left-overs and stripping the meat to preserve the bones. You couldn't start with a knife, as that risked 'collateral damage'. Mother put the whole critter in her biggest pot and boiled. And boiled, and boiled. Then you had to pick thru the greasy, funky mess to find the bones. Brother was in charge of that. I (the mechanical one and into plastic model kits) was to come in on the re-assembly . We never got that far- Mom and Bro gave up and threw the whole mess out.