Squid!

Jasper thinks squid are the coolest!  His latest ambition is to be a marine biologist and study squid.  Naturally, he had to be a squid (and not just any old squid, a colossal squid!) for Halloween.  I loved this costume because his ideas for Halloween costumes are always pretty far out. There is always little chance I will find one ready made to fit his idea.  And unlike my amazing mom, I don't seem to have the sewing gene.  Somehow, I found instructions for how to make a squid costume in about 15 minutes from  someone who made theirs with office supplies!  How awesome is that?  This costume was a huge hit!  When we went trick-or-treating, people would call their families to the door to have a look.  Now, I'm really excited about what other possibilities exist for posterboard!

Recently he had a chance to take part in a squid dissection given at the A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village in Salem, where I discovered they have a wide variety of intriguing group classes available.  The squid dissection turned out to be pretty straightforward, using a food-grade squid.  Of course, it was definitely great to have someone who has done this many times to direct us through it.  But the next time we were at our local supermarket, we noticed the same type of squid on sale, and you can easily find good instructions and even an instructional video  (part 1  and part 2) online.  So you could definitely go DIY and it would be pretty terrific and very inexpensive.  If you've never done it before, you could take advantage of the fact that squid are sold in groups, and do a couple at the same time.  Males and females have different internal anatomy, which is interesting to compare.  One word of advice the instructor passed on is to be very careful not to rupture the ink sac (at least not until the very end when it's time to take the "pen" and write with the "ink").  And in case squid ink really intrigues you, check out this lovely recipe for squid ink pasta!