male possum, acquired february 2023
goals: partial pelt, fully articulated skeleton
august 6th, 2023
theodore was my first corpse. he came to me because my mother, who works for our local wildlife center, went to trap him on a call from a homeowner, but he died before she got there. she didn't know what to do. she called me, said that she wanted me to do whatever i thought was most respectful for him.
theo sat in my car overnight (which was okay, it was the middle of winter) because i wasn't prepared to have him on my hands at all, and by the time i got him the home depot was closed. 6am the next morning he and i drove to home depot to pick up my very first vulture supplies. we listened to HYMN by The Narcissist Cookbook.
we got home at 6:30 or 7, and got to work immediately. i laid out a tarp in the alley beside my house and used a hobby knife, the only tool i had available, to skin and gut him to the best of my ability. it was the very first time i had ever cut into another creature (aside from the entirely human knife fights i've been in).
it wasn't pretty, but he was good to me, and we got it done. i even managed to salvage a small piece of his hide that i am currently in the process of tanning. after about three hours of work, he was settled in a five gallon bucket filled with water.
it took theo about three months to macerate, mostly because it was winter and i had him outside for a large part of that time. i screened him something like weekly, and was incredibly careful to not lose any bones because i ultimately intend to fully rearticulate him.
after his maceration period, i spent another three straight hours scrubbing his bones clean. this was when i discovered he was a juvenile, because pretty much all of his limb bones were unfused (and therefore far more difficult to clean). at this point parts of his skull also began to come apart, which i'm told is pretty much normal for possums, so i'll have some repairs to do on that front.
at the time of writing, theos bones have been in the process of degreasing for two or three months. he's a very greasy boy. his hide is in a pickling solution as i slowly work on detail fleshing it.