len's nature & creation zone

a birthday gift for my mom! the glove belonged to my grandmother (still alive) in the 70's

i can ID it as a doe because it doesn't have any noticable antler nubs, which are present even on juvenile bucks.

my cat left this little shrew out for me in august 2025, having been left unsupervised for a day.

i let it decompose outside by my usual method (patch of bare ground, plastic container with some holes on top, weighed down) and collected the bones before the first snow of the year.

i degreased & did an initial cleaning with dawn dish soap, then sanitized & minimally whitened with a hydrogen peroxide soak. i could have let them soak longer to get them whiter, but i was on a time crunch.

i considered trying to articulate, since i knew i had all the bones, but i cannot overstate how teeny-weeny these bones are. also, i don't have any of the proper glue, because i've never articulated before.

i ended up using this display case i had instead, sewing the bones down into the foam. i don't know if i quite got the ribs in the right order - i haven't done any study of anatomy since high school, and the internet isn't bursting with resources on short-tailed shrews.

*in the winter coat, coloration is near-identical to the short-tailed weasel (ermine), but the tail (over 11 cm long) allows for ID. otherwise small enough to be an ermine though, which indicates she's a girl.

long-tailed weasels range coast-to-coast across the americas, as far north as southern canada (me!) and as far south as peru. in 2015 they were designated a species of least concern.

we were hoping she would give up on the chickens, but she killed four, so we trapped her (legal for protection of property) using a snap trap (which, while they sound nasty, are broadly considered the most humane method). since she's a fur-bearing mammal (and i don't have a trapping license) i registered my possession of the carcass (& subsequently the pelt) with the ministry of natural resources. i can transfer possession as a gift, but i cannot legally sell it.

i skinned her, and air-dried the skin into rawhide on a stretchboard my father made for me. i didn't do a tanning process, so the skin is stiff, similar in texture to parchment.

this was my first time skinning an animal/preserving a pelt, and i was under a time crunch, so i was going off of details from a university lecture from a local indigenous trapper, a youtube video, and a few websites. that considered, i think mostly did a passable technical job (with the exception of the tail, which i had to sew back together).

it's in fantastic condition. the only maintenance needed was a belt adjustment, and a little oil.

it was designed as a lightweight portable machine, and packs SO many features into its compact all-metal frame. it even has a carrying case!