Itty Bitty the Roadkill Fawn: Part One

[strixalba]

Below the cut I'm going to be talking about the baby deer skeleton that I've had for about six months now. No photos yet, but if you don't want to read about animal bones then you're gonna want to give this entry a miss.

The Road So Far:
Collecting and drying:

• July 2018: my sister alerted me to another baby deer skeleton along the side of the road where she walks the dogs. I went to inspect it, discovered that the skeleton was completely intact. It had just rained for a week straight, and there was still a lot of soft tissue still attached. I collected the front of the skull, which had already been cleaned by nature.
• I cleaned the dirt off of the skull with an old toothbrush, and put it outside to dry before doing anything else. I laid it on paper towels on the back porch, put my bike basket over it, and then put a spare brick on top of the basket to keep it in place. This was to deter wild animals from scavenging, as the internet had warned me to do.
• August 2018: came back to my hometown. Went down the street, armed with half a dozen pairs of blue latex gloves, a garbage bag, some smaller plastic shopping bags, and a stick. A month after the Week of Rain, the body was a lot drier, though there was still a lot of skin and cartilage in place. I took a bunch of photos of the body in situ so that it would be easier to rebuild.
• I tried to keep the bones together roughly by limb, because metatarsals are hard to side. Skull fragments also went together, and I found a couple more teeth than I’d found in the original collection attempt in July.
• Everything was still quite wet and smelly still. I laid the bones out on the extra paving stones under my parents’ deck for the week while we were away. My parents have a fenced-in yard for the dogs, which means that there are fewer other animals in that particular area than there are otherwise. Therefore, I wasn’t as worried about letting the bones dry outside — I didn’t think another animal would steal them. At that point, I was correct.
• Once we got back from that week, I repacked the bones — still using latex gloves, and washing my hands and forearms thoroughly afterwards — into their plastic bags, and put them in a newspaper-padded box for the trip back to my apartment.

Cleaning, Round One:

• The bones were dry enough to do the first rounds of scrape and clean with a stiff-bristled toothbrush and an Exact-o-knife. The toothbrush came first, to scrub off all of the dirt and gook that I could. The knife was to scrape away at any fur, skin, cartilage, or particularly stubborn dirt. I don’t advocate for using metal generally. A wooden knife-shape would have been better, but I used what I had on hand.
• After that, I submerged the bones into a cleaning solution that would eat away at any of the remaining bits of flesh and loosen remaining cartilage. I got a set of cheap Tupperware of varying sizes so that I could keep everything divided up by limb and body section.
• The solution: laundry detergent that contains enzymes, mixed into hot water. Put in the containers, put the bones in, put the lid on, and leave it outside on the back porch for a few days with a sign taped to the biggest container saying “Deer bones: do not touch! Will only be here for a few days.”
• After a few days, pour out the water into the basement sink by the laundry machines and refill with more hot detergent water. Put back out on the porch. Bring air freshener with you and spray it around the sink because the bones are still smelly.
• Ignore and forget about the bones for approximately 1 month

Cleaning, Round Two:

• Pour out the water into the basement sink by the laundry machines and rinse off the bones with hot water from the faucet, scrubbing with the toothbrush as you do so. This took about an hour and a half. Still smelly, but getting to be less so.
• Rinse out the containers
• Fill containers with hot water
• Put the bones back into the water to soak clean, close the lids, leave out on the porch.
• Procrastinate on draining the water for another month or two.

Drying, Round One:

• Drain the water from the basins, scrubbing the bones with a toothbrush once more. They smell less now, and they’re definitely cleaner.
• Rinse out the containers and dry them
• Put the bones back into the containers so that they’re not touching each other
• Leave the containers on the back porch
• Check on them and discover that there’s a femur half-buried in the morning glory’s flowerpot, and a few more bones scattered onto the patio.
• Bag the individual limbs and bring the bones inside. They’re okay to touch without gloves now.

Cleaning, Round Three:

• Run into a friend-of-a-friend at a folk dance and talk taxidermy for a bit. He suggests washing the skull very quickly in bleach to get rid of any chance of prions
• Opt to use hydrogen peroxide instead.
• Soak the bones in a solution that is 50% hydrogen peroxide (the 3% strength kind you can get at CVS for $1.50) and 50% water. This apparently sterilizes the bones, though it’s not strong enough to whiten them. Wrap the containers in a towel to block out the light, which would deactivate the hydrogen peroxide, and store them under the bed.
• Leave the bones in the hydrogen peroxide mix for about a week, hopeful that they’ll whiten anyway.

Drying, Round Two:

• It’s February and way too cold out, and I don’t want to lose any more bones to the squirrels or whoever made off with a scapula, so I dry the bones inside this time.
• Rinse them off in the basement sink and stick them in a few plastic bins
• Plastic bins still gather water and leave the bottom sides damp, so transfer them to the 15-year-old beach towel laid out in the corner of the room. Try not to trip over the bones on the way to the bookshelves for the next two days

Cleaning, Bonus Round: The Teeth

• Fawn molars and premolars are all enamel and no dentin layers between, so they’re little mountain ranges with deep, cavernous slopes. I used a toothpick and a thick sewing needle to wheedle out all of the dirt that was STILL stuck between the layers of molars. It was both gross and satisfying.
• A job I would never want: Deer Dentist. Hermy the elf was off his rocker.

Comments

[thewrongkindofpc]

oh man, somehow I didn't realize you had all the TEETH, holy shit dude, that's wicked cool

[strixalba]

At the risk of being a killjoy, I only have MOST of the teeth - only one of four incisors, and I'm missing a molar (which counts for a large percentage of Teeth By Volume because fawns have hardly any teeth compared to their adult counterparts)

But YES. I was very excited when I realized how many teeth were intact! I will show you them soon if you want.

[thewrongkindofpc]

MOST OF THE TEETH is still pretty damn cool! Would love to check them out some time!