Confessions of a Bone Collector

At first glance, most people think I'm a sweet, good-natured young lady. I'm usually fairly polite, typically articulate, and have a good sense of humor. However, I harbor one dark secret in particular only known to my immediate family members and a few choice friends.

I am a bone collector.

Gruesome, you say? Perhaps. Demented? That's a little strong. It's difficult to put my finger on exactly when I became infatuated with the idea of collecting and keeping bones in my own house.

I think it all started when I was a young teenager. I live on some forest acreage conducive to small and medium animals living and dying of natural causes all the time, which makes it relatively easy to fuel my passion for decaying matter. One sunny, crisp fall afternoon, my family and I went for a hike through our woods, collecting what seasonal items we could get our hands on, like walnuts, deer antlers, and large stones that had just surfaced after the rain.

It was during this scavenging process that I found my first skull. Judging from the diameter, the placement of the eye sockets, and the size of the teeth, we figured it must be a raccoon skull. Taking my gloves off, I ran my fingers over the smooth ivory bone, taking note of each fracture and vein curving in and out on all sides of the jaw line. From that point on, my fascination was fixed.

My Most Interesting Bone Collections

Coyote Skull

My mom gets credit for discovering my first prized bone piece, a coyote skull. She surprised me one afternoon when she walked through our back door, skull in hand, and presented it to me as sort of a gift. I was in bone paradise. She occasionally went on walks in our woods for an hour or so, but she had never before brought me something this fascinating! I begged her to let me proudly display it in my bedroom, but she thought it best if something creepy like that be kept downstairs in the office where I could enjoy it while writing school essays. So instead of hanging it on a shelf, I put it in a box to keep.

Before we packaged it up, however, we let it sit in the back room for a while, just to make sure nothing was living in it. Sure enough, a huge (and I mean HUGE) black bug had made a home in the eye socket of my coyote skull. I don't know if it was in the cockroach family or not, but it chilled every drop of blood in my veins as I watched it crawl out of its habitation. From then on, I came up with a new routine to ensure no more bugs would ever live in any bones I kept.

Washed-up Raccoon

On another one of our scavenging excursions, my dad spotted a half-sunk object in our pond that looked suspiciously like a dead body. Upon closer inspection, we realized it was indeed a dead body, and that of a raccoon.

Gathering a sturdy stick from a nearby pile, I fished the raccoon out of the shallow edge of the pond and began poking it for inspection. Because it had died near water, it wasn't decaying as a normal animal would on soft ground this time of year. The water had began to rob the raccoon of its fur before the normal decaying process set in, revealing mushy, pale skin below. As I inspected the skull (my favorite part of any dead animal), I noticed it had turned into a rubbery consistency. After 10 or 15 more minutes of fun, I determined I would have to enjoy this find outside only; there was no way I would be able to keep even one small bone from the corpse this time.

Half-Decayed Buck

Deer antlers are some of our favorite natural collections in the fall. Typically, we'd like to collect them after they've fallen off a living buck. But for me, the dead ones do just fine. And one day, I hit the jackpot.

It was the perfect day for another wood hunt. It had just dried up after a few days of rain, which meant there would be soft ground and droopy foliage, perfect for finding little things that took shelter underneath them during the rain.

But after two hours of searching and only a few colorful stones near a creek bed to show for it, we almost gave up hope of finding antlers, nuts, big rocks, or anything of value. I had searched under every fallen tree and brush pile I could find, looking longingly for any sign of bones. I began heading back up the hill to search elsewhere when I stumbled over a craggily fallen oak. I almost tripped over the stump, but caught myself just as I was preventing a small disaster. When I looked toward the ground I would have fallen on three feet below, I noticed a complete rib cage, backbone, and fur-covered skull on top of some dead pine needles.

At first glance, it looked like a small Tyrannosaurus Rex, what with the sizeable rib cage and all. But upon closer inspection, I found an enormous rack of antlers, four or five on each side, still fully attached to the skull. Swarms of flies dive-bombing for food told me this death had occurred recently, within the past two weeks or so. The body was that of a fallen buck, complete with all four hooves and legs. I had just hit the mother lode.

I wanted to take the whole thing home, but I knew I had nowhere to keep all those bones. Even with two Rubbermaids for all the various bones I'd collected, I had no hope of fitting anything anywhere. Besides, there was still live flesh and fur around much of the bones, so anything I kept would smell to high heaven forever.

With some help from my family, I was able to wrench the skull, antlers, and neck off the backbone of the corpse. I also retrieved a couple hooves to take back home for closer inspection.

In a desperate attempt to keep the skull, I researched ways of removing the skin and fur, short of taking it to a professional. I landed on a particular process known as cold mastication, the only thing I could do without a spit or special tools. Armed with detergent, hot water, and my dad's aluminum basin, I set to work soaking the fur and skin, which indeed smelled to high heaven by the second day, despite the detergent in the water. After about four days of dumping, changing water, and nearly blacking out from the smell, my family heavily encouraged me to call it quits.

My dad helped me salvage the antlers before I took the rest of the body parts to their final resting place, a little graveyard spot just down a hill and out of view from our house. My hope is that by next year, it will be completely decayed and I can dig up some of the parts to keep for good.

So, are you tempted to begin bone collecting yet? If so, here's some tips you should know before collecting your treasures.

1. Find a place to keep your finds before you find them: You can't just let bones sit around, either inside or outside, for long. It could get tampered with by other animals or release tiny bugs into your home that you will never be able to get rid of. They attract flies also. I recommend keeping your bones in a sealed Rubbermaid container that's clear, so you can see through to your bones without opening the lid and releasing any smell.

2. Always kill off any possible bugs: Whenever I bring home a bone, I grab the bottle of Dead-Sure and spray away. Always do this in a well-ventilated area, as it attacks the nerve system. If you are exposed to too much, you are at risk for affecting your own nerves, literally. Also, keep it off your skin, away from your eyes, and wear a mask to avoid breathing it in. It's nasty stuff, but it pretty much kills everything.

3. Best times to search: One of the best times to search for bones and other dead matter is right after winter as spring is just dawning; old, weak, or unstable animals will have died during the winter and chances are, they've already decayed by now. March and April are great times to look for bones.

4. Best places to look: I usually have success looking near rotted trees, fallen limbs, thick brush, and similar places. Animals will often migrate to a shaded resting place before they die, so this is a great place to find a lot of bone parts in one place.

Bone collecting is not only fun, it's a great way to freak out your friends and family. Show them your collection sometime, and you're likely to hear about it for weeks.