In which Thor continues his skull-collecting and rotting misadventures.
Like typical philosopher/scientists of the 19th century, Thor and I have a curio cabinet full of specimens, travel mementos, and stories.
Thor continues from last week:
Plan B.
It became apparent that boiling skulls in the kitchen and storing body parts in the sink was not a viable option. A new skull cleaning method was needed. I found a small kennel for sale. It was a chain link cube about 5 feet on a side with a door. I put the kennel in the corner of our 5-acre property, well away from the house but close to the driveway (making it easier to unload large carcasses). When I found a body for decay, I would put it in the kennel on a piece of window screen so it would not get dragged down into the dirt by scavengers in the ground. I would leave the carcass exposed for a couple of days to allow flies to lay eggs on it, then I would lightly cover it with a piece of plastic, so it didn’t dry out. The fly eggs would hatch, and their maggots would consume the flesh. After a couple weeks, the body would be stripped of flesh, and all it needed was a few days in bleachy water, and you have a nice clean skeleton. It worked very well. We called it the Rot Box.
(top photo: barn owl and possum skulls)
Every week Laura and I would check on the residents of the Rot Box and see how they were doing. It was like a nice B&B in a Wind of the Willows story, though a bit macabre. “Hello, Mr. Barn Owl. Welcome to the Rot Box. I hope you enjoy your stay. Ooh, Mr. Beaver, you are coming along nicely. You should be checking out soon!” When Laura visited her friend’s house, she asked her parents where they kept their Rot Box.
The box was especially helpful when Laura lost her first tooth. The tooth had been loose for a while, and she was eager to give it to the Tooth Fairy. One Friday afternoon, Penny and I decided to see a movie. I was going to pick Laura up from Day Care after work and take her to a sitter. Penny would meet me at the theater. I picked up Laura and stopped at Taco Bell for a couple of burritos. Laura was eating when she suddenly said, “Daddy, there’s a yucky in my burrito!”
I reached out and she put it in my hand. I said, “Laura, this is your tooth!” She was very excited and wanted to keep it to show Momma, but I persuaded her to let me hang onto it for safe keeping. The implicit message was that I was the adult and therefore the responsible one. I put it in my breast pocket. I dropped Laura off at the sitter, met Penny at the theater, and we watched the show. As we left the theater and headed for our cars, I remembered the tooth. I said, “Laura lost her tooth today!” Penny said, “Oh, let me see.” I reached into my pocket, and IT WAS GONE! This was bad. I did not want to fail as the responsible father. Penny asked me what I was going to tell Laura. I said, “I’ll think of something. Go pick up Laura and I will meet you back home.”
I raced home and rummaged through the Rot Box. The beaver was too big and didn’t have the right teeth anyway. Neither did the rabbit. But the skunk (I finally got a whole one) had incisors that were about the right size and kind of similar in shape, if you didn’t look too closely. I pulled out a tooth, wiped it on my sleeve, and got back into the house as Penny and Laura drove up. We were all gathered in the kitchen, when Laura said excitedly, “Momma I lost my tooth today!”
“Oh yeah?” said Penny, a little hesitantly.
“Show her, Daddy!” said Laura as she reached out her hand to me.
All eyes were on me. I confidently reached into my breast pocket, pulled out the tooth, and put it in Laura’s hand. She peered at it intently for a couple of seconds, and I thought, “Oh shit, she’s onto me,” but then she took it and said, “See Momma?” and started to put it into the gap in her teeth. I lunged for the tooth and got it out of her hand before she put it into her mouth.
“What’s wrong Daddy?” she asked. I explained that the tooth had been in my pocket, and you never know what germs could be in there. I thoroughly cleaned the tooth and it was later accepted by the Tooth Fairy.
Phew.
As our skull and skeleton collection grew and I incorporated more of them into my university lectures, word got around. I was contacted by the Bellingham Herald, and they did a front page story on me and my hobby. After that, I started getting phone calls from strangers offering me bodies. One guy had a dessicated bobcat in his shed, which had fallen through a hole in the roof and died there. Another person had a barn that owls liked to nest in and had several owls in their freezer that I was welcome to have. (BTW, a barn owl is one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen up close.)
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
One of the most interesting callers offered me some calf carcasses that he had, which had been food for his tigers. He had several tigers in a large enclosure on a piece of land off Mt. Baker Highway. The tigers had originally been owned by a rich Texan who had to give them up because his wife wanted to keep horses. The Texan offered them free of charge to anyone who would adopt them, and he offered to pay for transport and construction of an enclosure. I do not know what sort of magazine carried this offer, but our man on Mt. Baker Highway read it and took him up on it. He had to get a special permit from Whatcom County to house these tigers. The local farmers knew of it and would bring over the occasional dead calf for tiger food.
We eventually left our 5-acre country parcel and moved into town. But I was still interested in collecting skeletons. A Rot Box would not fly in our new neighborhood of closely situated homes, so it was time for:
PLAN C:
Stay tuned for next week….
*****
You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky). It’s also a love letter to the stunning beauty of her native Pacific Northwest wild places. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
