When You Die, You Will Rot!

Vulture culture is a special interest of mine, it has been for years (I got that EERIE autism). My main is @museofthepyre and my alt is @carrionhearted!

My butt ugly son who I found at a flea market. He is vintage taxidermy from the 1950s, with beeeeeautiful glass eyes that hold a perpetual look of fear! His name is Wiley (short for Wise Financial Decision). I love him dearly.

I found this doe skull by the highway while cleaning up litter recently. Due to her location, I assume she was hit by a vehicle. As you can see, she's pretty damaged from such prolonged sun exposure. She's completely dry and clean of any flesh, but she does have a fair bit of this (totally desiccated) papery material in the crevices. Due to how fragile the skull already is I'm hesitant to try and remove this material. This is the first bone I've found and I wanted to 1. show off my find and 2. ask if I should attempt to remove any of this, or leave it be. The most I did was pick out a couple fur clumps from between the teeth, and even that wiggled them so much I worry to do any more.

OHHH WHAT A PRETTY GAL!!! Sun exposure is a double edged sword… making the bones weak, but also making your cleaning job a lot easier. I honestly would leave her more-less as is!

The papery material (if I’m seeing things correctly) is part of the deer’s nasal bone structure. I’ll add some photos of examples from my own collection for reference- but it is indeed bone! So no need to worry about removing it unless you want to. I usually just take some tweezers to pull out any leaves/ moss/ fur/ other debris, rinse it out and leave it at that (since the structures are so delicate 😅).

For the wiggly teeth, I’d be inclined to glue them in place, but that’s also up to preference! It just makes delicate skulls less nerve wracking to handle for me lol

SKULL WITH FLESH! Is there anything I should be doing to get the flesh off?? I am NOT EXPERIENCED at all

WOAAAAAAAH HE IS GORGEOUS!!!! If you wanna get the flesh off… I think the first step would be to peel back whatever you can 😅 the toughest bits to pry off tend to be the skin around the antler pedicles, especially if it’s dried out/ mummified at all. Use a small knife if it’s stubborn, basically just remove as much as you can manually.

huh…doesn’t that look familiar!

How much of the coloration of bones do you think is grease versus dirt staining? All came from very iron rich soil :3

A different sisters wet specimen rat fetuses! Tiny Tim Jim on the right, and Little Leonard Liam on the left

My wet specimen rat I named raccoon

A wet specimen lizard who’s species I forgot

And Nathaniel.

Nathaniel was named perfectly. I look at him and go wow that is a Nathaniel if I’ve ever seen one.

Skulls! The third image is my fathers collection

Cow vertebrae <3

Bones and teeth necklace gifted to me by my aunt (in order left to right: squirrel femur, opossum tooth(molar), and a human tooth!)

My youngest sisters taxidermy collection, a duckling and a rabbits foot

My mothers sexy mouse lady (she strictly refers to her as that)

I ran out of space here to nicely put down my last handful of pictures, so here’s a Jedidiah esc hour glass

I AM IN LOVE WITH THE SEXY MOUSE LADY OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS SHE IS BEAUTIFUL

Would you be interested in observing?𓁹𓁹