• Solo • I'll bet there's plenty of rumen there.

85th of Ashan 722

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Oram Mednix
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I'll bet there's plenty of rumen there.

85 Ashan 722

Gasps echoed quietly all around Oram as the cart lumbered into the anatomical theater. ”Faldrun’s balls, it’s huge!” somebody muttered, which made the hunter grin. He could tell which of the students were townies by how they responded to seeing a cow stomach for the first time.

The student wasn’t wrong. The organ *was* huge. To a city-dweller unused to such things, it must have seemed as monstrous and exotic as a dragon’s heart. On the other hand, hunters like him, and farmers, already knew that cows were pretty much giant digestive tracts on legs. Indeed, not only had Oram seen cow stomachs before, he had seen *this* one before, and as the cart rolled up, he stepped forward to help the other assistant hoist the thing onto the dissection slab.

Professor Seams had suggested to Oram that he volunteer for practical activities like this, not only to enrich his studies, but also to break up the tentrials of tedious book learning that otherwise made up the bulk of them. Oram had thus volunteered to assist in this dissection, presented to students of both science and medicine by a young instructor named Magdalene, as part of a course in comparative anatomy. Magdalene was a Licentiate in Medicine, currently under contract as an assistant instructor for a Professor named Argus Hamilton-Smith, who was sitting somewhere in the theater apart from everyone else, taking notes. Oram hoped he stayed there, for he hadn’t liked the Professor at all when he had met him.

By contrast, he did like Magdalene. She was serious, attentive, and focused, smart but down-to-earth, and willing to get her hands dirty, as she did now, helping Oram and the other assistant position the stomach on the slab so that it aligned roughly with the diagram on the easel set up to face the assembled students. The three of them stood by the dissection table at the center of a round room ringed by rows of seats and rails stacked three courses high. The current class was small enough that the students were all able to squeeze in to one side, in the bottom two rows. Magdalene could easily face all of them.

With the stomach positioned, Magdalene was ready to begin. Pushing a stray shock of red hair aside after wiping her hands on her apron, she surveyed the class a few trills before she spoke. ”Good morning,” she began simply, waiting a breath for the students to mumble their responses before continuing: ”this trial, we will be examining the stomach of a cow. As some of you have noticed, it is quite a large organ. Not only is it considerably bigger than a human stomach, it is structurally more complex, as befits its task of digesting large amounts of vegetable matter quite thoroughly.”

Magdalene began to explain the structure of a cow’s stomach, first referrring to the diagram on the easel, then gesturing for Oram to indicate the corresponding structure on the actual orgam. The diagram on the easel was colored in a way that the actual stomach was not, which looked more like a vast pinkish gray blob. Oram had had a similar experience a few tentrials ago when he had been assigned to dissect a crayfish. The diagrams available for that assignment had also been color-coded and simplified, and looked nothing like what appeared inside the specimen. The promised organs proved to be tiny yellowish shapes nearly impossible to make out without a handglass, and difficult even with.

With the cow’s stomach, fortunately, the structures were large and distinct enough to spot easily, even without useful color contrasts, and Oram had by now studied enough to identify them quickly. The esophagus -which was noticeably redder than the rest of the digestive tract- led into the rumen, which was by far the biggest portion of the stomach. The rumen itself was divided into a dorsal (upper) and ventral (lower) sac, separated by noticeable grooves, which Oram and the other assistant pointed out to the class while Magdalen called them out.

One of the students in the gallery asked if they could show the grooves again. Oram realized that the students there probably couldn’t see the structures nearly as easily as he could standing right next to the stomach, so he repeated his demonstrative gestures, exaggerating them a bit. Magdalene, watching the hunter do this, nodded approvingly, then continued. Close to where the esophagus entered the rumen as another structure called the reticulum. This structure was small and round, and much firmer and springier. The reticulum was recognizable from the honeycomb pattern visible on its surface. Again, Oram noticed the students straining to see what Magdalene was talking about, so he dramatically circled a couple of the hexagon shapes with large showy motions of his finger. Although he felt silly doing this, the students seemed to respond well to it, and Magdalene gave him yet another encouraging nod when he glanced at her.

Below the bulk of the rumen were the omasum and abomasum. The former was where most water got absorbed out of the food, and the latter was sometimes called the glandular stomach or “true” stomach. It had the same sort of acids and muscles that a human stomach did and worked on food much the same way before passing material on to the small intestine. There were coronal grooves, accessory grooves, and blind sacs, all needing their own ridiculous-seeming theatrical gestures to show off to the students in the gallery. Finally, there were two large flaps of tissue called the lesser omentum and greater omentum.

Here, Magdalene paused and asked the students some questions, then took questions from them in turn. After that, it was time to start discussing the internal structure and working of the stomach.
Last edited by Oram Mednix on Thu Sep 07, 2023 4:13 am, edited 5 times in total. word count: 980
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Re: I'll bet there's plenty of rumen there.

Inside of a cow, it’s too dark to read.

The task of cutting and opening the stomach to reveal the contents fell to Oram. Magdalene was busy with her notes and her easel, and the other assistant had grown nauseous earlier when they had drained the rumenal fluid together. This last was a necessary step, for, as Magdalene was about to explain to the students in the gallery, a cow’s rumen could contain upwards of 100 liters of stuff.

Oram did not mind; he had cut open stomachs before, albeit more with a view of examining contents than studying the structure. And the smell of the rumen wasn’t nearly as bad as that of a typical carnivore stomach, which tended, unsurprisingly, to smell strongly of rotten meat. By contrast the rumen smelled more like fermenting grass. It was heady and cloying, though not repellent. Still, that smell, combined with the sight of foamy green fluid, had compelled the hunter’s counterpart to leave the preparation room for a bit.

Oram did not feel compelled to go anywhere as he cut open the dorsal sac of the rumen. The inside surface was noticeably darker than the outside, and lined with little bumpy structures that Magdalene called “papillae”. Oram could see them easily enough, but the students who strained forward from the gallery probably could not. A movement caught the hunter’s eye, and he noticed the overhead lightstone fixtures descending towards him. Hearing a noise behind him, he turned to see Magdalene turning a crank in the wall behind where she had set up the easel. Neat setup he thought, glancing back up at the lights and then shifting slightly to get of their way as they came down to cast more light into the dark cavity of the newly-opened stomach.

The other assistant took that cue to retrieve something from the cart and hand it to the students in the gallery, who began passing it around, examining it while looking back and forth between it and the dissection table, occasionally pointing. Oram recalled that Magdalene had also brought prepared stomach linings from another cow. These were a light tan color. The students quickly noticed the difference. One of them pointed at the table and asked: ”That dark brown color. Is that all food matter?”

”Yes,” Magdalene confirmed. Without being asked, Oram reached in and scraped some of the stuff off the lining with his fingers, then displayed his darkened fingertips to the class. There was a smattering of disgusted noises, but most of the students just peered curiously. Magdalene noticed what the hunter was doing. ”Thank you, Oram,” she said, before resuming: ”You will notice that the papillae in the lower rumen sac are more developed than-”

”Wait, ‘Oram?’” one of the students suddenly blurted out. ”As in Oram Mednix the Chief Ranger?” Judging from the snickering in response, the inquirer was apparently the only student in the room who hadn’t already known.

”As in *student* Oram Mednix,” cut in annoyed male voice from the otherwise empty back part of the gallery. ”…who is not to be treated differently than any other student while we’re here.” The students collectively recoiled at the rebuke. Embarrassed at finding himself in the middle of things, Oram simply shrugged.

”Of course, Professor,” Magdalene cut in soothingly. ”I’m sure Oram agrees that he is just another student here this trial. Would you mind moving on to the reticulum, ‘Student’ Oram?”
Last edited by Oram Mednix on Mon Sep 04, 2023 12:46 am, edited 3 times in total. word count: 582
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Re: I'll bet there's plenty of rumen there.

Would you say you’ve seen a plethora of deer stomachs?

Oram was still not used to being famous. It continued to surprise him when strangers recognized him and seemed to know all about things he had done. He felt ambivalent about that. He didn’t enjoy the thought that he had already made a first impression, for good or ill, on people he didn’t even know existed yet. The hunter didn’t want his reputation to precede him; he wanted it close by where he could ensure that it behaved itself. And yet, he found that some people envied and even resented him for being in that position.

Professor Hamilton-Smith’s interjection changed the mood and dynamic in the theater, and Magdalene proceeded to rush the rest of the demonstration a bit. As she mentioned them, Oram cut open the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum. In each case, the other assistant brought forward the corresponding stomach linings as exhibits for the rest of the class to pass around and compare to what they could see on the table. Only the last bit of stomach, the abomasum, had the characteristic mix of acidic, sour smell with the sulfurous odor of decomposition that Oram associated with most stomachs. Magdalene did not ask Oram to cut open the intestines, as these were largely similar to things the students had already seen.

With the dissection finished, the students were invited to come down to examine it more closely, and to ask questions. One student, a biqaj girl, asked Magdalene if she could ask Oram a question. Magdalene shrugged. ”Up to him.” Oram looked at the girl and nodded for her to go ahead.

”Have you cut open any cow stomachs before?” she asked. ”Or any other ruminants? If so, how is a cow different?”

After a quick glance at Magdalene to make sure she wasn’t annoyed, he responded: ”I’ve seen a cow’s stomach before, but this is the first one I’ve handled myself. As to other ruminants, yes, lots of deer. Maybe a sheep once. But definitely many deer.”

He paused. The student, and a couple of her neighbors, were waiting expectantly for the rest of his answer. ”I do that mainly to examine the contents, to see what the game in an area are eating, and how well they are eating.”

He looked back at the cow stomach, thinking. Deer stomachs have all the same structures Magdalene told you about today. They are arranged slightly differently. The rumen sits slightly farther back, behind the reticulum. A deer’s esophagus feeds directly into the reticulum. Everything a deer eats has to go through there first. I imagine the cud would have to wash back and forth across the reticulum each time the animal ruminates, but I’ve never seen it in action.”

The students were a mixture of zoology and medical students, so they asked differing questions, not all of them animal-related. Magdalene could answer most of them; she was quite knowledgeable about farm animals in particular. When it came to the odd question about wild animals, she was willing to defer to Oram, though there were not too many more of those. At last, they were done, and it was time to gather up the dissected organ and to clean up. As he and the other assistant rolled the cart out of the theater, Oram noticed that the professor was not there, which suited him just fine. Magdalene, at least, made sure to let both of them know how much she appreciated their help.
word count: 600
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Oram Mednix
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Re: I'll bet there's plenty of rumen there.

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Notes/Warnings: Implied animal cruelty and grossness (dissecting a cow's stomach)


Thread: I'll bet there's plenty of rumen there.
City/Area: Surrounding Waters & Landmarks

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Re: I'll bet there's plenty of rumen there.

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Oram Mednix

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I appreciate that you used an existing NPC for the purposes of this class. Magdalene was a good fit for it, anyway, as she had animal husbandry already at a good level, as well as medicine so she could identify and spot different features of the animals internal organs.

Oram for his part was his usual stoic and down-to-earth self, focused on the task and running through the course labwork as you do.

I suppose I never thought of a cow as anything other than a steak or milk-factory on legs, but stomach on legs also applies to the live ones. They have more than one stomach if i remember correctly. I guess you'd need it if you're stuffing your face with grub and grass all day :D

Anyway, this was a straight-forward and neat classroom thread.

Good writing!

Rewards

  • Renown: 5
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Knowledges

  • Strength: Heave-ho-ing a cow stomach.
  • Teaching: Enlarging gestures to ensure that students across the room can see stuff
  • Science: Parts of a cows stomach.
  • Hunting: What the inside of animal stomachs smell like.
  • Teaching: Handouts!
  • Science: Comparing and contrasting the stomachs of different ruminants
word count: 199

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