As you may know already, if you are a frequent reader of this blog, a year ago all of my goats died. Their deaths were tragic, horrid ordeals that left me overcome with guilt and sadness. Not really. They died, they were buried, end of story.
Or was it.
A few months ago I noticed a hole where I had buried the goat that I buried. It looked as if my dog had been digging in it. I went down to insect it and sure enough it was the exact spot where I had excavated a shallow grave months previous.
Well being of a curious mind I grabbed a nearby stick and started mixing the muddy pool. I began to feel hard bits moving around with the stick and I managed to pry some of them out.
Bones. Lots of em. Vertebrates, ribs, scapulas, trapeziums, tuberosities, humeri, on and on they came. I quickly decided that if I was going to do this, I would do it right.
I ran back to the house, changed into more work like clothes, grabbed a shovel and a bucket and returned to the dig site. My main goal was to find the skull because it's obviously the most recognizable and kick ass part of an animal (Pelvis is the second-most kick ass... get it, cause the pelvis is where the- oh nevermind). I dug and dug and removed countless bones both intact and fragmented but I could not find the skull. I opened new dig sites north and west of the original site to see if they proved to house the skull. I used sonic graphing to make a map of the area. I hired the guy from jurassic park to come and help me but even together we couldn't find the goat skull.
It became apparent to me at this time that the most logical conclusion was that my dog (the first digger) must have removed the skull for her own storage. I abandoned the site taking with me an assortment of some forty bones.
There were only a few places that my dog would have buried a goat skull based on it's size and her previous burial rituals. There was the front plot where we had found a dead cat buried beneath one of our flowers, and the planter box near the garage where she had buried a dead raccoon.
After investigating the the front plot I decided it must be the planter box. I went to it but was disappointed to find no obvious digging.
I was about to give up hope when I noticed that one part of the dirt caught my eye. it seemed to be a bit higher than the rest of the box. I brushed away some of the dirt and to my surprise found a horn!
This was of course a major archeological discovery. Upon more excavation I discovered the rest of the skull underneath the dirt.
As you can see it was very dirty and not very white. I wasn't about to mount a dirty skull on the hood of my car! So i attempted to bleach it. I filled a tub with water, put the skull in and added bleach. Now to those of you considering taxidermy I have one bit of advice. Don't leave skulls in bleach water for weeks on end. The skull will get brittle and won't whiten.
I found this out the hard way, when i finally removed the skull almost a month after inserting it into the bleach bath I found that it was falling part. So brittle you could break parts of the jaw with your hands. Not wanting to keep a brittle skull I threw it into the bushes. Where it remains.
If you have beloved pets you'd like excavated you can hire my services for a medial fee of $135 per hour. I take the upmost care in finding and removing your beloved former critter from it's dusty grave.
Contact Hampton Excavation and Taxidermy at (503) 555-5555, or go to www.hamptonexcavationandtaxidermy.va
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