Ok, let me be honest for just a minute....I have been shirking my duties as a homeschool educator.  Frankly speaking, I have been avoiding handling the chicken mummy.  As an educator, I would look at the chicken, sitting on my counter, and say...we need to open it up and see how it's coming...maybe resalt it.  As a mom, I was just too grossed out to even touch it.  I gave it a wide berth.

This morning, I woke up resolved that it must be taken care of.  The mom side of me even hoped that the lack of attention I gave it may have ruined the process and we would have to dispose of the project (the educator side of me is very mad at the mom side).

Alas, when Daniel and I went downstairs to tackle the dreaded thing, we discovered that it did not smell any worse than it had smelled (which has been horrible) and it appears to have dried out more.  So, with heavy shoulders I rubbed off as much of the old salt as I could...clearing out the cavity (and dumping some of the wretched stuff on the floor!!).  Daniel mixed up new salt mixture and we resalted the bird.

We observed that there was definite drying occurring.  It has reduced in size significantly.  It has become heavier, it seems to me.  And it is as gross as ever!!

I exclaimed to Daniel as we neared the end of this phase "Don't you LOVE homeschool?"  His reply, "YES!  It is cool and stinky!"  Um....I hope he just thinks this part is stinky and not all of homeschool!!  ;)

In my haste to get this done, I only took 2 pictures of the poor bird.  The first is what it looked like before we opened the nasty bag....the second was how it looked with the salt rubbed off!

After handling the chicken mummy last week, I seriously debated with my sanity.  This project went from very cool to very gross very fast.  I had hope that today, day 13, that there would be some positive change with the gross factor.  Well, there wasn't.  It was just as gross or grosser today!!  

Here are some changes I have noticed, though.  

It is smaller.  It used to pretty much fill the bag, but it seems to have shrunk quite a bit.  I am supposing it is the "water weight" that has been shed.  The salt took a lot longer to get wet (and I am pretty certain that it is this that is the stinkiest part).  According to the directions, I may not have to resalt for 2 more weeks!!  I hope this is true!!

I see some portions that are definitely showing drying out.  There are things that are beginning to get a bit...crusty, if you will.

BUT, it will be a LOOOONG, LOOOOONG time before I am able to eat a rotesseire chicken or a baked in my crockpot chicken.  I still have hope that the end product will be worth all this NASTINESS!!!