#bone talk

Not a weird question at all! My favorite bone I have collected is either my Rabbit skull sitting on my bedroom trinket shelf (I might show you guys if you like? It has buttons and random cool things on it) or the deer jaw currently sitting on my bathroom counter (I was cleaning it)

👉👈 I’ll be working on drafts for my Naruto homies and such soon so look forward to that. All these holiday parties got me refreshed but also very tired LOL

I found!!! bones today!!! at one of the coastal beaches on a day trip with my Mama and one of my partners!! So many bones!!! I took several home to clean and use in creations!!! Could be seal, (doubtful but possible) dolphin/porpoise or even shark bones (more likely) !!!!

//Still not finished! I need to wait a week or two to get to a studio to cut out the pattern. Need more space rn, since I have a very small room. Anyways, bone stuff under the spoiler, since uh. Animal death and info about the process.\

//So, this one was actually a lot different than the opossum and the armadillo pieces.\

//It was a presumably feral cat. Completely in tact, I was almost worried it wasn’t really dead, but sure enough it was. There were no external injuries, and it was very jarring to pick it up. But I didn’t want to just leave it there, and let some of the neighborhood kids get traumatized, so I took them in and buried it.\

//Because there’s no wounds, and it’s fully in tact, I’m gonna give it around 2 months in the bucket, checking on it sometime next month to see the progress.\

//I’m treating this cat a little differently than I did the other two roadkill finds I had, since I own a cat myself, and this isn’t the same as finding an animal you’ve never seen up close. And uh. It’s VERY weird finding something like this!\

//Oh! I can actually put my process under the cut here! From when i first picked up the roadkill to now! I’ve been jotting it down anyways, and if you just want the step with the remaining flesh and bones, you can scroll to the bottom!\

//First you wanna make sure the thing you’re soaking is still decently in tact. Not a pancake, not crumpled like a paper towel. I have an opossum I found in the middle of the road. Named him Lucille.\

//You’ll wanna pack it up in a garbage bag, make sure to use gloves. If it’s a bigger animal, you can pick it up with the bag inverted, and close it up around it. For my opossum, since he was a juvenile, I just picked him up with my gloves and tossed him in the bag. If possible, you can also gut the animal, or cut away some flesh, but it’s not entirely necessary for this.\

//When you have your carcass transported, make sure you have a container big enough for the animal. Preferably plastic or metal, but wood will work as well. Fill the container with dirt, place your animal inside, and bury it. Then just. Leave it. For about a month. That assures the bugs will take care of most of the work for you! It’s safer this way, and you won’t stink of rotting flesh.\

//Once the month is up, that’s where I’m at right now. Take the bones from the bucket (You may have to dig or sift for them depending on the size of the carcass! You can wear gloves if you don’t wanna dig in grave dirt! Make sure to check for even the smallest bones if it’s a small creature!) and you’ll find they are still SUPER gross. Covered in dirt, greasy, still fleshy kinda gross. You could let them bleach out in the sun, and let them finish cleaning that way, but if you’re like me and live in an area full of thieving raccoons, you should get some peroxide. and let science work its magic from there\

//Put all your bones in the peroxide, and let them sit. I’m not a good measure for how long they should sit, but I’d say a few days depending on how dirty they are. Mine are still pretty nasty, so I’m gonna be checking on it tomorrow. Replace the peroxide every now and then, to get the flesh out (be aware it’s gonna stink like the HIGH HEAVENS, so maybe get a mask.) and you should have your relatively clean bones.\

//If they are still greasy, you can scrub them down with dish soap. And by the end of it, you should have some nice bones! All I have to say is don’t put them in rubbing alcohol. It’ll clean them, but it’ll also make the bones really frail.\

//I’m no expert either, so if this isn’t in depth enough, there are a bunch of people who make tutorials on this sorta thing! I may even be getting some of this stuff wrong, but I like to think I’m doing a good job so far! :D\

BA DUM TSSS

I really… really want a mongoose skull….

Alright, commin in at around 7-8 inches we’ve got a Long tongued nectar b.at, the American Opos.sum, a Red F.ox, and a Rac.coon

My first skull stack.
Bottom to top is a rac.coon, opos.sum, and a long tongued nectar b.at.

I can tell if this bab is a rac.coon or a Ba.dger.

I also can tell if they’re male or female. I know it’s possible to tell with some skulls

I was wondering if @boneidentification could help me out.

I have a thing for using the word bones in subtle ways throughout my day I have no idea why but I’m not actually obsessed with bones themselves like you wouldn’t catch doing this: *bites metacarpals* “DAMN look at that femur” “What I would give to have those phalanges on my clavicle” “Looking for some pelvic to pelvic action”

So I DO have all of Kitkat’s vertebrae up to the sacrum. That’s pretty exciting. They’re tailless, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t found any of the tail bones. I guess I have around 65-75% of their bones? Pretty neat.

Pretty much yes, in the US the only birds you can safely keep are things that have been introduced, so like Starlings, House Sparrows and Pigeons. 

You can get a license to keep certain game birds if they’re found in the shooting season as far as I know, and in some states crows are legal to keep, but it does depend on the state, and having a good ID of the bird. 

Best to be safe than sorry and put the bones and feet back into nature.

Hope that helps!

For here tips would be beaches for seals, birds etc., hills for sheep, roads for foxes and badgers. 

Also if you can, tell everyone you meet you do this, I’ve been given two foxes and a I’m getting a Goldfinch today because people know I do this!

Google maps is great, if you find a long stretch of road with some trees next to it, these can be good places for roadkill, especially if they aren’t fenced.

For decomposing, it depends on the body really, like @sittaeuropaea and I buried a full, fleshy, furry badger and it took like a year!

If you skin the animal, that will speed it up, if you can leave it lying out for a day or two that will attract flies, then you can bury it. A skinned fox will still take a good few months. If you want you can always dig it up and check!

Now I’ve moved to an Estate, with a decent garden/wood next to me, I quite like to do this open-air rotting method.

Hope that helps!

As long as they’re legally obtained they’re okay to sell, buy and trade, if you have an Article 10 to accompany each one, though I have three skulls that would need an Article 10 to sell, but they’re special to me and shall stay in my collection and be used this summer as part of my new ~Education Ranger~ job. 

Buzzards and stuff come up on eBay from time to time as being sold which is a big no-no, but trading is always a grey area, some laws say only if money is exchanged, some laws say commercial gain which includes trading for a different skull or whatever. So it is easy to not realise, so therefore I’m not naming names.

Someone in the facebook group I run, and that mydeadthingsdiary (can’t tag you for some reason?) is a long-time member of, is offering for sale a pair of human skulls.

I’m in contact with the Human Tissue Authority who do everything to do with the Human Tissue Act 2004 which affects England, Wales and Northern Ireland to find out if the selling of the specimen is 1. Legal, and 2. that it can in fact be posted in the UK from the EU if it is legal.

A lady that lives on the edge of town told the estate manager about a dead seal on the beach; he then told the head ranger, who in turn told me!

Is this it?

Have I reached it, being locally known as ‘that girl that cycles out to collect dead things if you tell her’ ?

I mean, it’s obviously mammalian and too large to be most rodents and I can’t quite tell but I think what teeth are left are omnivorous…? Not herbivorous, anyway. This really isn’t my usual field.

Judging from the movie setting and the intensity of the costume department it can be found in Australia.

Day 10: A family member complaining about the smell/sight/presence of dead things.

Don’t really have a photo for this one, but my family are pretty good when it comes to my hobby. However I did make my mum scream when I got her to look into the bag I had a dead fox in. Now she just asks “Do you really need another sheep skull?” and the answer is always yes.