Discovered: 12/04/2015
Method of Preparation: Burial in garden
Recovered: 08/12/2015
Method of Preparation: Burial in garden
Recovered: 08/12/2015
I was preparing to start my journey in collecting roadkill, and I reached the point where all I needed was a shovel for burying bodies in the garden. On my way home from buying a shovel, I happened to walk past a dead crow. I initially thought it was a back bin liner, but decided it was worth a second look. I keep bags on me for opportunities such as these, so I was able to collect the bird corpse without touching it. I took the bird home to bury in my garden.
Before burying the bird I removed the feet to keep as they are. I must admit, this was the part of the process I felt most uncomfortable with. I then buried the rest of the bird in the garden. I made sure to place a large tile across the grave to keep the neighbourhood cats out, which is something I would encourage others to do if they live in an area with lots of cats, as I do. |
I left the crow buried in the garden for about a month. When I went to dig it up I learnt that this was definitely not long enough. I'll spare you most of the details, but I'll just say that it certainly smelt like a half-rotten bird corpse. At this stage I transferred the head of the bird to a plastic container with holes cut into it, and placed it at the end of my garden. The idea being that insects will devour any organic tissue, leaving a clean skull for me. The rest of the bird, I returned to it's grave.
After being in the Tupperware box for a few weeks, I realised that the insects were not interested in eating tissue that had already been buried, so I moved the skull to a bucket to soak in soapy water, to see if that would help clean the bones. It did not, so I tried boiling the skull. This, also, did not work. So the skull was re-buried.
I then recovered the skull a few months later.
I then recovered the skull a few months later.
And a size comparison with the sparrow skull:
And here is it on display next to my cat skull: