As promised, a tour of the bones and skulls that grace The Havens. Almost all of these are found objects. The only exceptions are the ram skull, which one of my clients gave me after one of her rams died. She has a flock of sheep. This skull generally hangs over the garden gate, but it has weathered so that it doesn’t like to hang any more. I am looking for a new site for it. Meanwhile, a view:
The other gift was from another client who keeps cattle. This is a long horn steer skull. It lives by the fence on the west side of the Stroll Garden, and has appeared elsewhere in the blog.
The next skull lives in the corner of my living room, part of my wolf spider’s domain. I came by this skull at the end of hunting season when I was walking our fences because hunters on ATVs tend to just cut your fence when they want to poach on your property. Cattle will avail themselves of the exit and it isn’t always easy to retrieve them from across the river. This buck had been wounded by a hunter who did not bother to track the animal down. His whole front quarter was rotting as he was trying to overcome the wound, and so we finished him off and ate the meat that had not spoiled. Quite an excellent batch of venison, my mother opined that he had probably been dining on her clover and hay all fall.
Originally he lived out on the fence, and then for a while over our gate. One morning I found him adorned with a dewy web.
However, I decided he needed to live inside since the squirrels had discovered the calcium source in his antlers and were busy chewing them away. Not to be mean, I provided them with a nice femur bone of a cow that had died on my mother’s place. They are working on it.
Other items inside the house live in the plant shelves near the entry way.
The top photo features the scapula of a deer I found in the woods. Just below it in that shot is a shell plate from a mud turtle. The bottom photo is a box turtle shell that acts as a collection point for several items of interest. The wishbone is from the turkey we roasted and served for my 50th birthday party. When I found this box turtle shell, the platen was gone but underneath, still attached, was the delicate pelvis of the turtle. It has since detached itself, but the first lumbar vertebra is still with it. I see I could have dusted it more thoroughly.
In the shell are a couple of items that deserve a closer look. First, there is a finch skull. It is accompanied by an otter scapula. These were both finds on gravel bars on the Niangua River.
In the background behind the shell I also have the pelvis of an armadillo I found when I was out walking Ruby one day. It has such an interesting shape.
Out in front of the house is what we call the White Dragon’s Garden. This is the dragon that was stolen a couple of years ago and I recovered. Now he is firmly attached to about 300 pounds of cement under the garden, and no casual pair of teenagers is going to walk off with him.
So, he has quite a collection of bones. There used to be several turtle shells as well, but they tend to deteriorate rather quickly. First, I am in love with the way the pelvis of a cow looks, especially when turned upside down. As far as I am concerned, this would make a very cool mask. It has a very weathered cow skull as a companion.
There is also a bison skull in this garden. We purchased this at a rock and mineral show. The proprietors bought these skulls from people who were raising bison for the meat, they would clean them and sell them. If you wanted a skull with the horns intact that was about four times the money, so we just got the bony skull. Another pelvis and cow skull in this picture. All the cattle bones I have came from my mother’s farm, where a cow that dies from a reproductive disaster is left for the coyotes. They don’t always take away all the bones.
Usually the coyotes haul the spine and sacrum off and chew them up so you don’t find them. But one time there was a particularly horrible spring where several cows died, one had a prolapsed uterus, another a pair of twins tangled up, etc etc. I guess the coyotes had more than enough to eat and I was able to rescue this sacrum bone and several vertebrae.
I’m not sure exactly what my neighbors think of the White Dragon’s Garden and Boneyard, but I have noticed that since the collection got pretty good sized the Seventh Day Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Mormons don’t bother us. An unexpected benefit of collecting bones, to be sure.
If only it would discourage the Pentecostal Baptists.
the havens 