One day last year my dog ran into the yard with something in
her mouth. Pepper is 9lbs, and what she had was nearly as big as she was. My
dad got her settled down, and took the thing from her. It was the dried out
carcass of a squirrel. He wanted to show it to me, so he put in on top of a
bucket until I got home.
I stored the squirrel in my studio (left) for about a year. I’ve always
wanted to articulate it, but never known how. I could not find sufficient
resources online, so I’m documenting the process for others to learn from.
Be warned, there are some grisly photos. I am a vegetarian
and
think meat is pretty gross, but didn’t find the process
of cleaning the bones
to be that bad, but others
I’ve shown the photos to did. Meat=/=food to me, so
perhaps it is more
disgusting if you think meat=food.
The squirrel sat in a pile of turtle shells for about a year.
When Pepper found it, it was pretty much skin and bones. It stank a little, but
not bad. There were bug casings, but no bugs in it.
Here come the gross photos.
I started the cleaning process by soaking it in water. This
loosened the skin, and used an old pair of scissors and some tweezers to get it
off.
Once I had most of the skin off, I left it to soak in water
for about a week. Some friendly maggots got rid of all the leftover bits of
skin and such. I drained the water once during this process- it was rather
rancid. Then I flushed the bones with clean water and drained them. I let them dry in the sun for a bit.
When I finally had the bones clean, I discovered a possible
cause of death for the squirrel. His hip bone is shattered into three pieces.
Also, one of his vertebrae is broken. Perhaps the squirrel fell or was attacked
and broke his hip. I was disappointed that my skeleton wasn’t whole, but it was
exciting to find a possible cause of death.
I intend to soak the bones in a 10% solution of hydrogen
peroxide, but have not done this yet. Hydrogen peroxide bleaches the bones
white, but does not make them spongey like actual bleach would. I left the bones
in a pink bowl in my studio, on a high shelf.
I got home one night to find the door wide open.
My cats had gotten inside and knocked the bowl of bones to
the floor. The bones were spilled into my Dad’s collection of used motor oil
and across the floor.
I was able to find almost all of them, after shuffling the
bottles of oil around and sifting through the sawdust and spider webs on the
floor. All except one tooth.
I searched everywhere for that tooth.
Eventually, I found the tooth over 2 feet away from the rest
of the bones, inside a coil of metal flashing. For now, the bones are safely
stored in a drawer.
