#animal bones
India ink + gold/silver leaf on bones
Top two are coyote and bottom is swift fox
For sale; message me for details
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It’s been a while since I’ve gone bone hunting! Can always bet on finding some cow bones but it’s cool to see a more complete skeleton. Some old deer bones were found as well, but nothing was brought home this time. Keeping the vulture vision sharp!
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The armadillo is chugging along after 2 months of cold maceration! It’s truly winter here in the mountains but I have the maceration bucket under an upside-down aquarium to act as a little greenhouse and it has proven very helpful! Any sun that decides to peak out warms up the glass and keeps the water temperature moderately warm. It also keeps the smell in quite well! Super excited to get this one all cleaned up.
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The next skuzzle on my to-do list is this bullfrog! I had the mummified bullfrog sitting in peroxide and ideally I would have taken out a mostly intact skull around 2-3 days but I only got a chance to check it about 5-6 days in and all the skin/ligaments had dissolved so I got to pick out the pieces instead. Unfortunately the body sustained a lot more damage than I thought so no skeleton articulation. Some pieces will be taking a degreasing ammonia soak and then I get to start gluing!
It doesn’t look like it but progress is being made on the fish skull! After the first acetone bath it went into the warm Dawn/ammonia bath for a month and then back into acetone for another 2 weeks to get more grease moving. This picture is right after pulling it out of the acetone where a lot of the grease is now dispersed throughout the bone and ready to come out. It’s back in warm Dawn/ammonia now and I’m hoping to see some good progress!
Coachwhip vs Rattlesnake
The beauty of non-venomous and venomous side-by-side! I did a little adjusting on the rattlesnake’s jaws while I had it out and I’m in love all over again. Kind of wishing I kept the coachwhip’s body but at 6 foot long I just don’t have the means to assemble and display it right now.
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Coachwhip / Red Racer Snake Skull
So glad to have this one finally finished! It turned out beautiful and it was so worth gluing every single tiny tooth in by hand.
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Degreasing the bobcat has been the bane of my existence but this before and after speaks for itself! Finally pulled the toe bones out of degreasing after 10ish months and they’ve come a long way from when I first got them. Now I’m just waiting on the leg bones and carpals/tarsals to finish up before finally being able to start articulating.
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I’ve had this fish skull sitting in acetone for over 2.5 months and was hoping to see a little more progress on this grease! For the most part acetone is not going to “degrease” bones but it helps loosen up the grease to come out easier with other degreasing methods. However I read a lot of fish people had good luck melting the oils out of fish bones with just acetone so I was a little disappointed to open up the bucket and find crystal clear acetone. It definitely brought up a lot of the oils to the surface though so the classic Dawn bath should do wonders!
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The sun came out so its time for some turtle cleaning! This female Eastern Box Turtle was beautifully cleaned by nature so she got a soapy scrub and a dip in peroxide for cleaning and sanitizing and is now sitting with a peroxide/baking soda paste for some whitening. In the first picture you can see the plastron scutes starting to come apart after drying from the soapy bath so I’m hoping they stay put now, otherwise I’ll have a fun project on my hands. Looking forward to getting this one all cleaned up!
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Bone Hunting: East Coast Edition!
My boyfriend and I just completed a road trip to the east coast to visit family who owns acres of dense forestry and we couldn’t wait to do some bone hunting. We first found a beautiful doe skeleton who looked very peaceful in the forest, so we let her be. My boyfriend then hiked up a steep hill and called me up to look at something strange and to both of our surprise it was a box turtle! It’s in beautiful condition with most of the skeleton in or around it, save for the skull (of course!). To top it off on the way back to the car I found a lovely monarch butterfly lying in the grass. That was the end of our east coast hunting but not the end of the treasures!
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I’m kicking myself for jumping the gun before taking a disassembled picture (the skull thus far has 11 separate pieces), but now I’m stuck halfway through this coachwhip skull! I had a little too much confidence in thinking I knew the assembly because I had done my rattlesnake skull before, but shockingly, venomous and non-venomous skulls are quite different! I at least thought to keep the parts I pulled out on the correct sides (save for the few pairs on the top that had fallen off before I touched it) but their relations are a little bit mysterious to me.
Also unlike the rattlesnake, all the itty bitty teeth were not fused to the jaw, but I managed to save almost, if not all, to further torture myself. It will all be worth it if I can get the darned thing together! Rattlesnake is in the background watching over and being generally unhelpful~
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Juvenile Opossum Skeleton
My baby is complete! Took a long time to get the motivation to power through articulating and even longer to get pictures I was happy with, but I am so proud of this fella. I still need to add the rib cage cartilage and sternum bones once I figure out what material to use. Shown with an average adult opossum skull; when I get a complete adult skeleton they will be a hissing duo!
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It’s moving time! Luckily we’re moving just down the road so my big friends here could be thrown in a big box as a beautiful skull pile. This pile also debuts my lovely new pronghorn skull, found last summer in New Mexico. Now we’ll see how long it takes for me to unpack everything and get my cabinets back up!
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It feels good to have a productive work table going! Finally started drilling on the bobcat with the first focus on the spine. The tentacles were wonderful to help decide on how to position everything and I’m going to attempt to add epoxy cartilage between each vertebra.
The foot on the right side is from a young coyote leg I found years ago and finally got around to articulating. It’s nearly identical in size to the bobcat’s feet so it was great practice and it will be a lovely addition to the foot collection!
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We took an impromptu out-of-state camping trip last weekend in the mountain deserts and we’re already planning trip #2! This is wild horse/burro and elk territory so I was hoping to find some goodies and wasn’t let down with a young elk leg and partial horse leg (I seem to have a leg theme going on).
Antler shed hunting is big around here so I didn’t dream of finding antlers but my boyfriend was adamant and proved me wrong with a beautiful 4-point elk shed from this year. He also found a lovely chunk of quartz which needs a good cleaning along with the rest. We’re off to the buckets now!
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Getting back into the swing of things by fixing up my articulated deer leg! I pulled out my new rotary tool to practice drilling and after figuring out the correct placements it was a very easy process. A fallen oak tree made a perfect base for this piece.
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This lovely chicken skeleton will be joining my bobcat for a grand articulation piece. The weather has just been miserable around here so I’ve had no motivation to progress on any bone projects. I won’t be able to articulate much of this skeleton without the bobcat already done but I’m hoping to start doing something with this one at least.
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