Death and life in the woodshed
June 11, 2018
Years ago, the roof of our summer-house suffered some water damage and had to be replaced. So I converted it into a woodshed which I attached to the side of our house. As well the store for our firewood logs, it’s also where I keep many of my decomposing corpses — most of them in boxes and bags, a few of them not. Recently, a self-seeded clematis Eccremocarpus scaber has worked its way through a crack and started growing over the specimens and the logs:
Most of the specimens are hidden from view, apart from a tortoise that you can make out in a translucent box over on the right. The centrepiece here is some kind of medium-sized mammal, consisting of the skull and much of the vertebral column and ribs, which my youngest son brought back from a camping trip for me. Elsewhere in various boxes and bags are multiple kestrels, a falcon, several other birds, a couple of bearded dragons, a snake, a mole, a rat, and miscellaneous small mammals. Some day, I will prep out all their skeletons. I really will.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
June 11, 2018 at 8:50 pm
[…] See also: Death and life in the woodshed. […]
June 12, 2018 at 12:45 am
Be careful, I think in some states it is illegal to have any kind of bird of prey. It might even be a federal crime to have the remains. I don’t know but check it out.-joe
June 12, 2018 at 6:37 am
Ah, I used to have a death shed too. Took forever for that deer to skeletonize and stop stinking… Speaking of which, your “medium-sized mammal” is surely an artiodactyl, no? Skull looks too broad to be a deer. Maybe a sheep?
June 12, 2018 at 8:16 am
Wow, Joseph, what a weird law! Anyway, I’m in the UK, so it seems I’m safe from your Feds for now, at least. I do know that the Newent bird-of-prey centre, which is less than ten miles away from us, is required to cremate their gorgeous corpses, which is a real tragedy.
Mickey, you may well be right about the sheep — it’s the strongest candidate anyway, based on what we have a lot of around here. I’ve not really looked at it.
June 13, 2018 at 2:31 pm
Not just birds of prey, but most birds in the US and Canada, thanks to an international treaty. Only non-natives (pigeons, starlings) and certain upland game birds (crows, turkeys) may be collected without a salvage permit (and the permit requires depositing remains in a museum).
I don’t know how well enforced this is. It seems to be mainly a loophole-closer, so that if a suspected poacher claims he just found his haul, the prosecutors don’t have to prove he’s lying.
I’m envious, Mike. I live too close to my neighbors to get away with this sort of thing. I’m currently prepping an opossum I found, but I had to travel out into the sticks and deflesh it the hard way.
June 14, 2018 at 3:31 pm
Mike, that isn’t a Clematis (which is in the family Ranunculaceae), but rather Eccremocarpus scaber (in Bignoniaceae; the tubular flowers give it away). Here’s the RHS page about it: https://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/6213/Eccremocarpus-scaber/Details
June 14, 2018 at 3:39 pm
Thanks, Ian; I updated the post accordingly.
September 2, 2018 at 11:05 pm
[…] blue tarpaulin covers the decomposing body of some kind of mammal, probably a goat or sheep, which became too smelly to be allowed to sit uncovered. As I kept […]