Rig-o-berto

PSA: Land Cruiser > Land Rover.

‘bUt ThEY aRe SuPeRiOr iN tHe MuD’

Kingsley III is the third Black Spitting Cobra I am attempting to skeletonize. This is him back in December fresh in his 3 liter jar, and him now 5 months later. The rain kept getting in and drowning the maggots, but the dry season is coming so maybe things will speed up. I’m getting impatient.

The first cobra I put in a jar of tequila hoping to preserve him as a wet specimen (works for worms, right?!) but I was young and naïve and turns out wet specimen preservation is way more involved than that and you can’t get formalin here. He bloated and his skin all sloughed off. I tried boiling him after that, but it weakens the bones too much.

Then I buried Kingsley II in lime and dug him up later, but the moisture in body hardened the lime into caliche and I had to basically chisel him out. Chiseling is rough on delicate snake bones.