roadkillghost

[roadkillghost]

how do you properly clean and prep skulls/remains? i know there’s a process, and idreally like to get into it. i see plenty of roadkill around my area, and i live near a forest, so i have plenty of access to corpses, i just don’t know where to start

Hello! This is a very good question, and a very broad one too! This response will be a lot of links but please let me know if you have any specific questions not answered here and I will be happy to help out more!

Here are a few good ‘cover alls’ for bone collecting:

Bone collecting for beginners: http://shadyufo.tumblr.com/post/80217392992/bone-collecting-for-beginners

This is a MASSIVE masterpost, there are a few dead links but the most part this is super helpful and covers pretty much everything: http://bonedork.tumblr.com/post/111135325993/vulture-culture-masterpost

@mydeadthingsdiary has an amazing blog with some really really helpful information on too, you can either scroll through or just search “bone cleaning” on their blog. They also wrote this bone cleaning guide which I believe you can purchase from etsy as a PDF

Jake’s Bones is another good guide for bone cleaning, if I am a little bitter (hey, where’s my documentary?!) This is useful, more for bones than for animals but still useful! They are also the creator of this:

Simmering seems to be all the rage nowadays, even though it is personally not my fav method at all, but here is a guide to that too

And finally here is a good youtube channel in which some guy trials every possible bone cleaning method out there with a neat little review.

A lot of stuff depends on your location (mainly weather and laws) and also your access to supplies and what sort of animals you get. A good thing to bear in mind is that patience is a MASSIVE thing too. Part of the reason I am so terrible at processing is because I have no patience!

AS A SUMMARY: my personal method is to find a dead, skin it, gut it as much as possible, bury/macerate (I often combine the two and i call it The Swamp Method) then degrease with fairy liquid- always brand name, and then whiten with 12% peroxide.I hope these links cover all you wanted to know and I am super happy to answer anymore questions you have! Just to finish off, here is a big list of all my fav vulture blogs that come to mind. There are more out there but these guys are definitely worth a follow if you want more vulture content and more processing insight!

@shadyufo / @mydeadthingsdiary / @nabsthevulture / @birbbones / @vultureculturecoyote / @vulture-kitty / @saint-nevermore / @cummy–eyelids / @skelelegs / @somedeadthings / @prettydeadstuff / @blackbackedjackal

#ref

[roadkillghost]

Some days, you just end up with a horse skeleton in your trunk.

June 2, 2018

[roadkillghost]

Double-Crested Cormorant skin all prepped out for taxidermy. I love their dark, silvery feathers. Cormorants can dive down up to 160 feet and stay under 70 seconds. Very excited to put some together for a local museum.

[roadkillghost]

I was wondering if you could tell me how you’d know of a skull is clean enough to display? My boyfriend found a cat skull and I’ve soaked it in hydrogen peroxide, cleaned out the brains, soaked it in dawn dish soap, and now I have it in bleach diluted with water. It’s a bit brown in some areas. Also I’m afraid of displaying it and having someone get sick from touching it or something so I don’t know when it’s done? Thank you!

I apologize so much for the late answer! I went to answer this the first time I saw it and then accidentally closed the window.

It’d probably be best to ask a more experienced blog (@shadyufo could probably help you) since I haven’t done too much bone cleaning myself, but it sounds to me like you’ve done more than enough to sanitize it. There are a couple flaws with your cleaning, though, so if it’s ok, here’s a walkthrough of how I clean bones:

I start by cleaning out dirt, any remaining brain material, etc with a small brush (I use the kind meant for cleaning in between teeth with braces). Then you can scrub the skull with soap and water. Once any visible debris is gone you can put it in a bucket of hot, soapy water (dawn, like you used) to remove grease. For larger bones, people tend to do this for a month or so while changing out water once it gets cloudy, but for something that small it would take less time to degrease.

From there, I move to hydrogen peroxide. The peroxide is meant to whiten the bones, so bleach isn’t necessary. Most vultures (including me) strongly advise against bleach, even diluted, because it can cause bones to get chalky/crumbly. Here’s a post comparing a peroxide-cleaned bone vs a bleached one. It’ll be to a lesser extent with diluted bleach, but it’s still best to avoid it in the future. 

If some areas are still brown, it may be grease from a skull that isn’t fully cleaned. In that case, head back to the dawn soap. You may also need to soak it in peroxide a bit longer.

Lastly, don’t worry about disease! By the time something is completely down to bones, traces of disease are most likely gone. Wear gloves, wash your hands & use caution with knives if you’re removing organs, but after it’s cleaned & been in peroxide you really have nothing to worry about. I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from handling bones with no guts left on them. 

Hope this helped! Followers are welcome to chip in with any other advice.

#bone cleaning #vulture culture #asks #ladyvileblood

[roadkillghost]

[roadkillghost]

Thylacine skull and bones from Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany. [x]

The tag reads “Thylacinus cynocephalus, Van Diemensland.” (Tasmania was originally called Van Diemen’s Land until 1856, when it was declared a self-governing colony and given its new name.)

[roadkillghost]

🌺💀🌺

[roadkillghost]

All of the ‘already dead’ insects that I found over a week in France and in the last few days in Norfolk. These are going to form an artwork that will include all of the dead insects that I have found in 2018. Work in Progress.

[roadkillghost]

Beautiful Dreamy!!!! Got her from hideandfur.

[roadkillghost]

VC Etsy Share

Hey everyone, I think we should have a list of everyone’s Etsy shops, if you have a shop, reblog this post with a link to it.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/OuroborosTaxidermy Heres Mine

#ref

[roadkillghost]

old bones in the forest , what secrets do you hold?

[roadkillghost]

Hey yall! I’m seeking bird taxidermy (that IS LEGAL TO OWN) in the US. vintage or new, kinda goofy looking is ok with me too 😅

can anyone point me in a good direction?

#just boosting! #hope ya find someone

[roadkillghost]

Who says gardening can’t be metal? This season’s skull harvest is coming in nicely.

Photo by Reddit user ZUELK

[roadkillghost]

Call to Action for Vultures

Hi, folks! So there’s yet another petition going around telling Etsy to remove all animal parts (even legal ones). I’m not going to link to it because I don’t want to give it more attention, but I thought you all might want to take a moment to contact Etsy and tell them how much you appreciate the Taxidermy & Curiosities section of their Home Decor department. 

Consider speaking as a buyer of natural history specimens, or as a seller of artwork, or both if it applies. Talk about how you appreciate natural, biodegradable materials that are ultimately less ecologically harmful than plastics and other synthetics. Or whatever you feel is important about the hides, bones and other remains we care for. 

We spend a lot of time complaining about what goes wrong, but why not take a moment to thank them for something you appreciate?

PS - If you get a form response from Etsy saying “It looks like you want to leave feedback on a shop, here’s how!” reply to it and say “No, actually I wanted to give nice feedback to Etsy as a company.” They’ll then forward your info on.

[roadkillghost]

My two domestics who waited too long for being posted. Cat was found in bushes outside the city, it was a whole skeleton drowned in mud of it’s own decomposed flesh - I was getting rid of that smell for a long time. Fun fact: it had all teeth but I lost many as I washed it in the river first. As for dog I found only his cranium in rough shape by ponds, probably his body were dumped there long ago. Top of his skull has visible mark of decomposion.

[roadkillghost]

Finished up some skulls for the Etsy shop! New domestic bermes python skull and a some weasel skulls!

[roadkillghost]

So around November a friend gave me a deer carcass for a project I’m in the process of cultivating. I left it hang in a tree over winter to dry out. Today, I went to take it down…but to my surprise, I found new life forming in the heart of death.