Squirrel Bones - Part 1

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.