Alas King Poultron, we meant him well...

So some school projects go well and others stink. Literally. King Poulton was unceremoniously sent to rest at the local dump after three days of treatments left him smelling like... rotting chicken. Was I disappointed? Yes. What woman hasn't always dreamed of mummifying her own chicken? I decided that we needed to figure out why an experiment performed by so many others had failed.

Results of our scientific inquiry? The head embalmer didn't pay enough attention to what kind of salt she bought.

This is the salt I bought:

This is the salt we needed:

So what did we learn class? That Epsom salt is not really salt. I should have been thinking chemicals - magnesium sulfate and sodium chloride are harder to confuse. Mag sulfate is no good at preserving anything, with the exceptions of preterm pregnancies and moisture in your skin, which were both very unhelpful to His Royal Stinkiness, King Poultron.

The boys have I have decided to try again in a few weeks, but on a smaller scale. Maybe mummified Cornish hens?

Mr Montgomery and his class

(at St. Helen Catholic School, Pearland, TX)