Bonespired

Bits of grease are peacefully swimming on the surface of the water.

So much grease is still in the bones - the teeth were literally pink at the start - that I started to wonder: what if 6 cold months under the ground just wasn't enough for the marrow to break down completely? The teeth clearly had a ton of stuff inside, why not my bones be in the same state? Some stubborn tendons are still very attached to the back of the skull, so the idea of maceration started to creep up on me more and more.

And hey, this is not a method that can ruin my bones anyway. Besides, there is no real set order here, so when I noticed a lot of grease was still inside my bones, assuming it comes from the marrow, why not just pull the skull out and take a step back and macerate the fox a bit? Because getting marrow out with a dishwasher sounds like pain - if it is even possible. Rotting it down sounds a lot quicker.

The weather is nice and warm enough for a proper maceration without additional heating, and I happen to have another dead head that I found during the winter and stored in the garage, waiting for maceration season. And these guys can share a bucket together.

My young buck finds in winter, still having dried fur attached here or there, he needs a good pool time.

To be honest, I really enjoy how I cannot really fuck things up with these bone friendly methods, I can decide at any point with my fox to macerate it, doesn't matter if she was in the degreasing state before.

Now the fox and the deer are happily sitting in warm water in the sun (with the lid on), and I plan to check on them after a week and then decide what happens next. If everything is okay, then degreasing, if there is some tissue still, another week comes. The only thing I already dread is the water change. Man, maceration is just a new level of stink; this is something you can never get used to.

I also rethought my boiling ideas from the prev post and decided against it, so that won't happen.

The only problem was that we were right at the beginning of fall- that means everything that helps the rotting process was just about to halt. I couldn't leave her out in the open, so I had to relocate her, but did I want to take the head and clean it in the fast way or clean in the slow way?

Let's talk a bit about the fast and slow ways!

With the fast way, I could just chop off the head right at the atlas, bag it, take it home, skin it, deflesh it, and either way macerate it - I do have a heater for it - or even boil it. Yes, I know boiling is easy to fuck up and ruin bones, but sometimes I do use boil. I boiled a small rat skull, because burying left me with a fall-apart tiny rat skull (that I glued together, but oh God, I don't want to re-live the experience). But defleshing a skull by hand won't give me a 100% clean end result, because there are places that I simply cannot reach. Macerating is not my favourite method, because of very smelly reasons - but sometimes I have no other choice.

The slow method, however, is simple - just bury the fox, mark the place, try to secure it the best you can and wait.

The first method is fast and secures the skull, sure as hell I won't loose the skull or teeth. The second is cleaner, but I can lose the whole carcass anytime, and the question is when to unbury it without giving myself nightmares is also on.

At the end the species of the carcass made the decision: this is a fox. And even if rabies is rare where I live, we still have it and sure as hell I won't skin a wild animal without knowing the COD for sure - my best bet is she was killed by a human, foxes with rabies tend to hide before dying. She was found very close to a farm with chickens, so I think the farm owner either shot her or poisoned her - she died next to the creek, probably got caught drinking or went to drink bc of rat poison. But I couldn't know for sure. So, gloves on, bagged her and went to bury her.

But for how long?

After burying her, I went out on the internet to collect some data about how long it takes for a medium-sized, fully intact, non-skinned animal to rot down underground, starting with the cold months. Found Jake's blog and he happened to have a very similar project to mine - a whole, intact fox he buried right at the beginning of the fall - if I recall correctly - without skinning. He let his fox rot down for a whole year and at the end, he pulled out a whole, clean skeleton: no fur, no skin.

Well, Jake is living in Scotland. Scotland is slightly colder and definitely wetter than my country, but overall we have very similar weather. If his fox took a whole year to decompose fully, mine probably takes the same amount of time. But if I am paranoid - and I often am, lost some great finds in nature before - I can give my fox a visit in 6 months maybe. I only wanted the head, but Jake wanted the whole skelly for his project.

Fast forward 6 months, things went well, the fox remained undisturbed, and I felt like maybe the skull is in a collectible state, so yesterday evening nagged the husband into checking on the fox.

This will be easy, I thought. We know where she is, I thought. Just digging a bit and pulling out clean bones, I thought.

Yeah, I was an idiot.

The place was there, still undisturbed, everything went fine, moving the logs away, we put on her, to make things harder for fellow foxes to dig her out. And I started to dig. And dig. And dig. And when I didn't find any trace of her, I started to get worried.

What I did find was tons of bugs - the forest soil is extremely rich and living. Perfect choice to let a girl with a bug phobia dig - I literally scream-jumped every five minutes, whenever something slimy moved as I uncovered it. But this is my hobby, and the hobby has dark moments as well.

But after that hour, I really started to turn blue. I really wanted this fox, and I knew bones can change places when you bury them, but they are literally disappearing??? I totally thought I lost a whole freaking fox in the forest. Plus, I also wanted to go an hour before sunset, because this will be an easy job, and won't take long. So we were out there, in the forest, digging and occasionally screaming in the cold and dark like idiots, while I developed a small emotional breakdown over losing a skull. This was the point when the husband decided we won't go home without finding the bones, and he found her literally within 5 minutes. I should let him dig right from the start.

How I imagined finding her was we find some fur, because creatine is the last to go (not counting the bones) and with luck that's it, no horror, just bones. What we got however was the fur, the bones and the freaking skin still clinging to life. Skin is always the thoughtest part of the body, it just refuses to step into oblivion. But considering we buried this lady, all intact at the beginning of the cold months, spent 6 months underground, with a relatively mild winter, it was enough for all the soft tissues, organs, flesh, everything to be fairly gone. Except the skin.

All in all, we found the skull, collected the skull, sadly lost 3 small teeth - had no chance to find them - and a canine, but I found the canine. Brought home, washed, hopefully did not lose any more teeth - double checked, so I have to have them all - and now she is degreasing. Which will be several weeks probably - I could see on the teeth they still have stuff inside them, but somehow hoped the skull was finished with the marrow. As it looks like, that's not the case, tons of grease are releasing from the skull and degreasing always takes ages without heavy chemicals.

Conclusion

If you buried something medium-sized, fresh, and intact at the beginning of the cold months, and are wondering when you can unbury it:

Depends on the weather, but if you have a winter where the average temperature is below the freezing point, but not above 10 Celsius, the rotting will still take place relatively speedy - enough for all the organs and flesh to go. This means 6 months. So all fall and winter. You can give a try to unbury the carcass, if you are ready to deal with the degrease that's coming and the sight of the still rotting skin. Teeth will be loose, watch out for them!

Degreasing. 6 cold months apparently is not enough to get rid of the marrow totally. This means you still have to do a full degreasing round. Depending on what you use, this can mean months. If you don't want to deal with that much grease, I'd leave the carcass underground for a whole year. (But if I recall, Jake also spent long weeks with degreasing after a year of rotting down his fox.)

If you have colder weather than this - freezing, snowing, minus degrees - I would definitely wait until next fall to unbury, just to be sure, so a whole year spent underground.

Mark the spot! And not just the area where you buried - the spot where you put the carcass! Take photos of the carcass in what position you put it on the ground, where the head is, etc! It caused some real pain to find her, where she is exactly, and then which end is which. Bones move over time, but not under this short amount of time - probably everything will be where you left it.

DO NOT go out to unbury the carcass right before sunset. You don't know how much you have to look for the carcass. If you are worried about being spotted, pick a period of the day when people is not around - dawn or morning.

Gloves (spare pairs too!), bag, and hand sanitizer are a MUST! Rabies is not a problem with tissue gone, but you can still get an infection from the juices.

That's it for now, the project goes on. I will probably degrease the bones for weeks now. As for disinfection, sadly I don't have liquid peroxide, only cream. Still looking for the liquid one, but ever since I cannot make sure the cream will cover every inch of the skull, I prepare to boil the skull a tiny bit. I am extremely cautious with boiling though - I am not cooking, just disinfecting. Plan to give her a 10-minute long simmer bath (max) depending on the bones. I boiled my juvenile longer - as my first skull, I had no idea how long I should do it - and the skull is still perfectly fine, not damaged, so 10 mins won't kill my adult fox either.

The first step is done I found my bones in the ways I talked about in the longer post I made about how and where to find bones when you are living in the city, so that part is done - now I am happily owning several stinky, rotting and disease-infected bones. Now I just have to clean them!

(Just to be sure: in this post under the words "cleaning bones" I strictly mean get rid of the meat/other soft tissue, not degreasing and disinfecting! Degreasing already has its own beginner-friendly post - which was reblogged so many times, I couldn't believe it!

This is easier to say than do because there are several options for cleaning bones from bugs to chemicals:

The complete list looks like this - you can clean bones by:

letting them rot on the surface

macerate it, which means let them rot in a bucket of water

boil them

toss them to the bugs - beetle colony

bury them

Not every method is suitable for every individual or even for every bone. Someone living in a busy neighbourhood on the 6th floor probably won't let the head rot naturally or start a beetle colony. So let's start simple and talk about the

Rot Pot aka. The Burying Method

The burying method basically means you bury your bones under ground and leave them to do their things naturally. There are some pros and cons to this method:

Pros:

it is doable in a flat (will tell you how!)

it has zero smell - nothing!

it is cheap!

doesn't require your time or effort at all (during rotting)

Did you just say I can rot carcasses in my flat without ANY smell and constant health department visits????

I did! You can totally rot away things even if you don't live in the middle of the forest - all you need is a plant pot that is big enough for your carcass, soil, some pebbles if you like (explaining in a sec), a plant if you like it, maggots if you feel like and you are good to go!

So the very basic equation for this is the carcass + pot + soil = bones. Your starter pack can be only the pot and soil. You grab the pot, fill it with one layer of soil - I like to make it quite thick to make a carcass sandwich here: I want my skull to be in the middle, so I am aiming for circa the same amount of soil on the bottom and on the top as well. Put your carcass into the pot and cover it with more soil. Keep it moist, so water it, like you'd water a plant and you are done.

For dirt, you can have plant dirt, bought in a store or you can bring some dirt in from nature. Pro, nature dirt has all the nice living bacteria colonies in it, hungry for some meat. Con, it can look weird if you start to shovel up the dirt of your local park. If you can get natural dirt, go for it!

If you wanna go fancy, you can put some pebbles into the pot as the first layer, so pebbles -> soil -> carcass -> soil. The pebbles' job is to ensure drainage. Drainage, you may ask? What kind of drainage? Well, water ofc and eh... body juices. Do not worry, nothing nasty will come out of your rot pot! But you have to let the rot pot drain, it won't be like a flood, trust me, I buried several things and no horror scene happened, ever. It is more for the water than the juice, just like for any plant case.

As for the maggots, you can go to a fish store - like a fishermen's store? To the store where you can buy rods and such things? Where do people go to get their baits for fishing? Idk what it is named in English, so go to the fish bait store and ask for maggots. We call them "bony"s over here, they eat rotting things. You can sprinkle these guys as sugar confetti over your bones and bury them with it! They will be fine, happily munching away on the flesh - maybe some of them will be outraged, disagreeing with being buried alive and they climb around on the surface, but once they realise the good thing is under them, they will deep dive into the ground. In this case, however, keep your pot outside. These guys become flies over 2-3 days and then they will be ready to discover the world, so they will be swarming and you definitely do not want to keep them in your living quarters.

You can also get free maggots by leaving the carcass out in the open for a day or two as a peace offering to the Fly Gods, but your carcass will definitely smell during the offering.

You can plant a plant(??? English ffs) over it, making it fancy. That is just for the fanciness.

And that's it, job done! You can totally forget about the pot, except for the watering and you can chill around.

But, like every method, this also has cons:

the waiting time: it won't be done tomorrow

not knowing when it is done

stains. on the bones. from dirt.

small bones are falling apart

oh and you have to skin your carcass!

Skinning?????

Ah, yessss..... You know, skin is problematic. But the real asshole here is creatine. Creatine is the stuff that builds up nails, whiskers and fur and they refuse to rot away easily. It takes a significantly long amount of time to dig out a corpse fully cleaned, with no flesh and fur. Ain't have years to wait for that, so to avoid rotting skin with still attached creatin to it - also skin loves to stick to the bones like a glove, especially on the head, I swear to God.... - you have to get rid of it beforehand. This means you have to skin your carcass. Your possibly smelly carcass. Not everyone has the stomach for it or the heart. I skinned a fresh rat I had found outside - and I am obsessed with rats. I seriously adore them, I have pet rats, I rescued rats, I supported our local wild rat colony with rat-friendly food during winter, and I love the buggers. I basically worship them. I did some anatomy studies of them for my art and I love biology, but there is a difference between actually skinning the animal you love and drawing the muscles. So I really wanted a rat skull, because I draw lots of rats, need a reference. And I have a rat carcass. But I love rats. But if I let it rot I am risking losing the rat and the skin will be a problem. So I made the decision of skinning. But not only skinning, oh no. You see, I only needed the head. Everything else is just too small for me to put together. So I not only needed to skin the animal I love I also needed to cut the head off of it. And I did exactly that. I wanted the skull more than I wanted to adore and feel sorry for the poor rat. How was it going? I constantly asked her forgiveness - she was dead for hours, I didn't kill her, a cat did - and once I was done and buried and cleaned up, I cried for 20 minutes, thinking about how horrible a rat parent am I because I just skinned a rat and buried its head. It was with me for days. The psychological effect is definitely something you have to think about. Maybe you will find a cat and you are into vulture culture, but also a cat person: then what? Skinning animals, especially the ones we keep as pets can be challenging.

The waiting is over... or is it not?

The other cons factor is the waiting time. It differs from carcass to carcass, how meaty it was, whether was it skinned before, and how big the carcass is.... my rat skull (skinned) was done in under 2 weeks, but a bigger animal, like a skinned sheep, can take a month - month and a half. The bigger the skull is, the more soft tissues it has due to its size, the longer it will be under the ground. But how can you be sure about the end of the process? That's it, you cannot! You have to check it out manually, you have to dig it out to see yourself. And digging out early, well, that is not a pleasant experience.

Stains?

Dirt causes some brown discolouring in the bones. Personally, I like it, I think it is a cool colour! But if you want museum-quality, well, burying is probably not the best method. You can still use H2O2 ofc, but there is the chance some stains stay.

The 3D puzzle problem

And lastly, the problem I hate the most: if you bury a small skull, it will fall apart. Period. Every time. I saw people pulling out fully attached big skulls, but I buried small skulls - you cannot macerate rodents, so I guessed my rat goes into the pot to avoid this problem! And now I have this nice 3D puzzle to put together - yes, I am crying inside.

My rabbit doesn't look better either.

You wouldn't even think how fragile, thin and small pieces are part of a skull. And now I have the luck to know. Yaaaaay.

If you wanna get into bone restoration, this is a great starter package for you, but if not, then once again: burying is not for you.

Where to find bones in the city?

I live in the last district of my city, which means I have agricultural territories, with big machines and people activity and city landscape as well with all the cars and even more people. Both areas are not the ideal, silent, magical forest, where people are not stepping into and animals live (and die) peacefully, their remains are silently waiting to be collected. Still, 90% of my bones are coming from the city.

I am not extremely lucky or blessed, trust me. A year ago I simply walked by these findings, without even noticing them, which probably happens to you as well. The bones are there, you are just not looking for them! But that is about to change, so where to start?

For city bone hunting, you will need to:

Walk a lot. Yep, put on your most comfortable shoes and have a nice long walk! You can target busy roads - but safety first! Not worth risking your health or even life for some bones! You can collect several roadkills in the city, from birds to cats, even deer and foxes (ofc deer won't march into the downtown area, but foxes do!) Roads gave me several bird skulls. You can check your local train tracks as well if you like me living at the edge of the city: I have found deer, fox and even a hare on the train tracks. Parks can be amazing finding spots! My rat and a magpie finding comes from our local park area. Look around in the neighbourhood! Many people have outdoor cats or the city has stray cats, and cats hunt a lot, even for fun. This means they don't always eat what they kill. This is a great method for the suburban area, I even found an abandoned cat kill in my own yard and I don't have a cat. But you can always look for stray cat prey in the city as well.

Adapt to your local area! If you live downtown - walk in parks and check out the frequent areas. Lots of people mean lots of garbage, which means food for the local wildlife and lots of traffic means roadkills. Just go on with your day and keep your eyes open! Stop diving into your phone, but rather look around yourself, you will be surprised how many things you can find. In parks focus to bushes and under the trees, because injured animals are hiding and eventually pass away there and predators, like cats like to take their prey to a more peaceful and hidden spot as well. As for the roads keep an eye on the edge of the road, because some drivers if they hit something just toss the body to the side. If you live next to an agricultural area, then once again, put your comfy shoes on and move outside. You wouldn't think how many animals are living around you, relying on the fields for food, but lemme share my local wildlife, which is a basic Central European wildlife living right at the edge of the capital city: - foxes - deer - squirrels - birds of prey - various rodents - martens - different singing birds of various sizes from crows to coal tit - and ofc stray animals, cats and dogs All these mean potential bones for you and they are out there, waiting for you. You can even go and meet them in person! Just get up early, around sunrise or an hour after sunrise max or at sunset and you can see deer and hares having breakfast/dinner and sunbathing on the fields. You can see hares any time of the day during mating season, they are too busy to even mind you then. Birds of prey are constantly hunting in the sky. Foxes are sneaky however, I have only seen one so far. They are easier to spot during winter when the weather allows snow to form and fall. Ever since I got into bone collecting during the warm weather, I haven't gone to specific bone hunting sessions yet, due to the high risk of ticks, so I am waiting for winter and the dying vegetation to not risk my health. But I have found many bodies, lying simply on the dirt road or on the fields, close to the road. Extra tip: definitely go out hunting after huge storms! During summer sometimes huge and heavy rainstorms break out with super strong winds and breaking trees. We had one of these storms this summer and I purposefully went out to see how the local wildlife survived - and sadly as I expected they suffered casualties. Falling branches and local floods can and will end several lives sadly, and you can give them a second home. During that particular afternoon, I've found a pigeon, a rat and a deer in the river. Ofc you won't be able to collect everything: the pigeon had too many people around (and I have too many birds already), the rat was ruined by a car and no way I can pull out a whole deer from the river next to family houses and drag home, but if the circumstances would be slightly different, I would collect. You can never know what you will find.

Pick up an outdoor sport! I am a runner I have found most of my bones during my runs. An outdoor sport can highly increase your chances! Because you are already out, covering certain distances and you won't dive into social media during your runs, so you can actually focus on your environment. You don't have to run to find bones, you can also take walks, the point is to be outside and focus on your surroundings and pick areas where you are probably will find something.

Safety Instructions

But before you grab your stuff and go outside, let's just run through the safety part as well - because you need to be safe even if you are in the city and you are not at risk of being eaten by a bear or breaking your leg in the woods. Always take your phone with you! And be sure you have mobile internet on it. You can use Google maps if you are lost, you can call someone if you need help, have your phone with you, charged and with working service. Don't go out before sunrise! Morning or evening doesn't matter: hunt for bones in the sunlight! I don't care about "what others will think if I am collecting dead animals", this is the city! You need to be seen for the drivers to not hit you and some parts of the city are simply not safe to set a foot into. Avoid those parts! Parks can be dangerous in the dark, and some districts can be dangerous in the dark or even in daylight, don't do it. Safety always comes first! I don't need to tell you if a carcass is in the middle of the road, leave it, right? It is probably already ruined way too much, keep looking, you will find another one. If you can walk along a road, do it properly: always walk facing with the cars that are coming toward you! Don't follow the same direction as the cars go, because you won't see them if they are coming from behind your back. Be sure you are not blending in the environment, you can even put on an orange vest as well. If a road is too busy, do not walk next to it. Roads with extremely high traffic are a no.

With basic human logic, you can avoid being in trouble.

What do you need for collecting?

Okay, so you have some idea what areas you wanna check and are ready to go out, but what do you need to collect the findings? First and foremost you will need a:

bag, a simple plastic bag, that you use for the trash

pair of gloves!!!! No touchy-touchy with bare hands!

hand sanitizer is always a good idea

And basically, that's it. When I am going out next to the fields I also bring a designated knife as well, to cut things if needed - in the city, I rather just bag everything in and I will do the fine-tuning at home. The more people around, the sooner I wanna hide the carcass away before someone starts to ask questions. When no one is around I have more time to get the parts I am interested in.

Also, I have priorities: city findings are coming home with me as soon as I can get them. This can mean grabbing them right away or coming back for them as soon as I can - like I found my rat on my way to the store, ofc I won't pick it up and bring it with me to the store. I got some extra bags in the store and picked the rat up on my way home instead. Field findings can be hidden and left out, especially if they are not fresh. I am not really fond of taking home stinky carcasses and I have a bug phobia (funny I know), so maggots make me cry, I won't touch it if maggots are already there. It is also the question of how much I need the bones: I hid a dead magpie outside because she is my third magpie already, but I would take home a maggot-covered, stinky cat anytime. If I really need the bones, because the previous finding is not perfect or I am missing the species it comes home with me as soon as it can. I lost too many first findings to wildlife to be super picky with them. Good advice: if you wanna keep your field findings outside it is better to cover them with a cage or similar to not let local wildlife drag it away, but it can still peacefully rot away. You can also bury it, but definitely mark the spot! Otherwise, you will forget the exact spot in no time.

And lastly: always have extra bags and gloves with you, because then you can collect impromptu findings! A trip to the store or a walk with the dog can give you something and would be a shame if you lost it only because you don't have bags.

And sometimes you won't find a thing for days or even weeks! That is normal, don't be encouraged, keep your eyes open! And if you took home the finding - you have various options for cleaning, but that requires its own post.

As a beginner bone collector, who also doesn't want to put a huge amount of money into it and finding an acceptable way to clean bones is essential. Mainly because of the challenge, - tbh it is quite enjoyable for me to create quality bones with a less amount of investment, it just makes me feel like I really worked for it, I love these challenges - but mostly because it is already difficult to make my family accept this kind of a hobby of mine. Not many people are fond of keeping rotting animal parts at home, I can tell you that! If this hobby turns out to be stinky and expensive, that is definitely a no from family members. And even though I am an adult, making my own money, my husband does have a saying about the family funds - because we are both responsible for this family - so it is important for me to keep things at a reasonable price.

There are many ways to degrease bones and you have to pay a price for it either way, be it about the time period the degreasing takes or the used materials. You can degrease bones chemically, using liquids like ammonia or acetone, but personally, I dislike these, because:

it requires some effort to put your hand on this stuff, they can be hard to come by

they can be harmful to your health (ammonia is not nice to work with)

they can be expensive, and we already have to buy H2O2

they have to be stored and get rid of properly - you cannot just let these go down in your sink

and some materials can be straightforward and dangerous - read about some pros are using stuff like petrol for degreasing and while it does the job, petrol is extremely unstable, highly flammable and tend to blow up easily, so super no!

So, I go with the safest and also the cheapest solution: dish soap.

Dish soap is something that is easy to come by, can be super cheap and the water system is well prepared to clean grey water, so you can pour dish soap into your sink. However, it can take time to degrease your bones. While ammonia or acetone can be done with degreasing under a day (depends on the size of the skull and species of the animal), dish soap takes a lot longer: days at the best, months at the worst. But this is also the easiest degreasing method for beginners.

But there is another big question: how do you know your degreasing is working (and when it is done)?

When I started to even think about degreasing I went online, read about dish soap and was happy because everyone has dish soap at hand, so I picked a pot, filled it with cold water, pour the dish soap in, put the bones in and yay, magic was done! But things are not this simple.

The first days everything went fine: my water had fat oil drops at the surface and a visible white cloud came out of the bones, so a clear sign of the degreasing is working. But this stage went down quickly, like a matter of days - and I thought okay, degreasing is done, time to pull the skulls out and whiten. But my whitening never turned out white, rather like light grey and first I blamed my peroxide because of it, then my bones. These are findings from nature, probably they are stained, right?

I started to be doubtful when my cat skull turned out to be sticky after whitening. That never happened before, so another research later I came to the conclusion the cat that I thought are fully degreased is actually not degreased. But it didn't do a thing in the pot anymore. So what did I do wrong?

I used cold water. Apparently cold water works, but only for a while. It cannot really pull out the grease that is hiding deep inside the bone - that's why I stopped seeing white cloud after a matter of days, falsely thinking I am done. I needed warm water in the long run - if I simply use warm tap water that just runs cold way too quickly. It can be done with warm tap water as well, but that takes even longer. So, I bought an aquarium heater.

I looked after the fat oil drops in the water. They appeared on the first day, so I thought they will keep appearing until I am done. Turns out they don't? Rather the water slowly goes more opaque and murky with time, but no more fat drops don't matter how hard I am looking for them. This makes my job significantly difficult because oil drops are easier to spot and tell based on them if the degreasing is working or if I am actually done.

I am just super imapetient. I want my skull done and perfect as soon as possible. But it just doesn't work like that. I am working on this cat skull for 3 weeks now and it is still going: I had to macerate it, then degrease it, then whiten it, and then go back to degreasing and all I wanna do is glue it together and post fancy pictures of it. Won't happen for a while, time to accept that.

But how this opaque water progress looks like? I was so confused about is it clear water, is it dirty water, is it done, whether the water is warm enough or not, so I started to document the process.

This is the freshwater stage. I just changed the water and quickly snapped a pic of it, making it my reference piece. I can clearly see all the details of my bones, even if my dish soap is yellow, colouring my water a bit - but I can see through the water without any problem. My heater can do 36 Celsius degrees max, otherwise, it cooks the fish in the tank, so I put that on max, hoping it will be enough. About the temperature: I did read about 46 Celsius or even more than 50 Celsius for water temperature, but the aquarium heater cannot reach those degrees, because the main goal is to keep fish alive and no fish stays alive in 40+ water. I could use a bucket heater, but for me, that is harder to get and I really don't want a setting that takes a lot of space/costs a lot of money, so an aquarium heater it is.

Another thing I am not comfortable to put my bones in more than 50 Celsius degrees. This is my personal choice, but I really wanna avoid any chance of accidentally cooking my bones, and 50 seems to be too much heat.

I looked back at it an hour later and snapped another pic: and look, we start to get blurry details! No oil drops on the surface, but something definitely makes the water murky: my water is not hot enough to cook the bones, so it cannot dissolve or take any kind of damage in my bones, so this stuff must be grease! Seems like the heater works!

Checked the bones that evening as well and the water is definitely even more opaque!

And this is the next day: I can barely see my bones anymore, so definitely time to change the water.

Conclusion

If you think you are done with your bones, but they:

have yellow spots or wax on them

stick to your hand like you glued them

are shining here or there

have a waxy feeling

smells

Then your degreasing is not done. The good news is you can always go back to degreasing, doesn't matter if you whitened the bones or not.

The cheapest version of degreasing is the dish soap version and you will need warm water for it! It can be a good idea to get an aquarium heater because that will help you to macerate carcasses during the winter as well and quickens degreasing too. You can work with warm tap water, but that takes even longer.

But the dish soap method really takes time! Seems like this part is the longest one in skull cleaning. So even if it seems like my degreasing is not over and my method works, I can also see I won't have a pretty white cat skull anytime soon.

The bones are bathing for the third day in a row now and they seem to release the same amount of grease, so no sign of clear water yet. Also, when I pull the bones out of the water I can still see yellow spots on it - that is grease, sweeping to the surface and I need to get rid of that.

And how I will know my degreasing is done? My water stops being opaque. I can decide when to pull my bones out - do I want to fully degrease it or I decide to end it sooner because I want some discolouration, preserving am roe natural look.... that is up to me. Ideally, I wanna do a full degrease, but I just wanna preserve my bones perfectly to have quality art references that will be with be for a long time, so I try to go for a full degrease and will see how long that takes.