Biology teacher Stephen Spruell needed to teach his students about always being a skeptic, and there was only one way to do it: he consumed mouse urine and droppings.

Every year in his biology classes, Spruell has a tradition where he brings in a jar of mysterious liquid and a cup full of unknown round objects.  The students were told by Spruell that these are in fact mouse droppings and urine, and moments later, he downs them in front of the whole class. “I’m not gonna lie to you, I think my eyes really widened, I got a little scared,” freshman Aishwarya Babu said.

Most students questioned whether or not the urine and droppings were real, and volunteered themselves to drink the ‘mouse pee’ in front of the whole class. “I did not believe him,” freshman Adrienne Lwanga said. “I was very shocked, but still, I didn’t believe he would do that.”  

Later in the demonstration, it was revealed that the mouse urine and droppings were simply Mountain Dew and raisins. “I do the whole shock and awe [demonstration] with people thinking I’m drinking mouse pee, and a lot of people think, ‘there’s no way [he’s] doing that,’ [and I say:] if you believe that, come up and try it,” Spruell said. 

Going up to drink the ‘mouse pee’ was no small feat mentally. Even if the volunteer had severely doubted that it was real, they still had a small fear that it could be. “You know what, at least I’m not the only one doing it; at least if I’m going to get a disease, they’re getting a disease [too],” Babu said. 

Spruell’s main motive for this act was to encourage skepticism among all of his students. “As time goes on, I really want people to be skeptical about what [they’re] told, because sometimes I say that if something’s too good to be true, then it probably is,” Spruell said.. “I want them to approach things with a little bit of skepticism and question things they might have heard before [or] some stuff that they might think.”

Spruell’s act went according to plan. The bizarreness of what his students saw forced them to be skeptical of how truthful he was, despite him being a teacher. “I remember when he asked us what we thought it was, I definitely [thought] it was Mountain Dew or Seven Up, and then I smelled it, and [knew] I was right,” Babu said.

Another lesson Spruell tried to teach his students through this demonstration was that having the mindset of a skeptic is not easy. He tried to get them to think in a way that challenges information they’ve heard before and were heavily inclined to believe, which was a difficult mindset for many people to adopt. “You might hear something from a friend or family member that you always thought was true, but as time goes on you might learn it could be incorrect,” Spruell said. “It’s a hard feeling to correct yourself, and to know that what you once thought was incorrect.”

This class tradition goes farther back than just the two years Spruell has done the demonstration. It’s been going on since Spruell’s high school biology teacher did the same demonstration when Spruell was in his class. “I remember doing this two years ago when I was still [teaching] at my middle school, but this came about because of my high school teacher,” Spruell said. “She did the same exact thing, and there was a lot of skepticism, but [my teacher] did it, and she was just this short, little old lady, Mrs. Diesel, and I thought that [the demonstration] was wild. It stuck with me ever since, I had to do that in my classroom too because I remember how it felt for me, so I wanted to do that for my students because it was a lot of fun.”

After doing this for years, Spruell has some favorite memories of the demonstration. “[I love] seeing everyone freak out, it makes me laugh, but I’ve [got to] keep my composure to really sell it,” Spruell said. “When I taught middle school, I had these two boys who tried to be all tough and cool, but I had them come up and [drink] it in front of the classroom. They tried it and ran out of the classroom to the bathroom to rinse their mouths out, and when they left, I pulled out the bottle of Mountain Dew, and [the class] all started laughing. The kids came back and were picked on a little, but we all had a good laugh about it.” 

Despite the oddity of the mouse pee escapade, Spruell will still continue to do the demonstration with all of his biology classes to teach the lesson of skepticism in our daily lives. “Being able to change your mind is a good thing, especially in the world of science,” Spruell said. “And if I’m known as the teacher who drinks mouse pee, it’s funny because it has a good story behind it, but they can still tell that it actually wasn’t pee. They might forget the lesson, but they will remember the experience.”

Gallery • 4 Photos

Nidhi Manchala

Pictured left to right, freshmen Aishwarya Babu, Adrienne Lwanga, and Camille Conner all describe the taste of what they consumed to their class.