Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Collector's items

As if the weather and the company weren't perfect enough,
Sunday's trail ride was topped off by the proverbial icing on the cake:
finding an entire cow skeleton.



Spotting bleached bones from a mile away is my superpower.



Me: Look, Lucy! Another skull for our collection.
Lucy: If I keep my eyes closed, maybe it will disappear.



I'm not sure if Lucy was giving the stinkeye to me or the skull, but I'm guessing the skull.
It was still a bit ripe.



Lucy: You can hang the jaws on my other side for balance, but that's it.
We'll have to come back for the rest the next time...
and the time after that...and the time after that.



I'm guessing this poor girl has been decomposing for about a year. We found the skull, jaw, neck
and a shoulder blade about 30 feet away from the main skeleton, and they were bleached clean.
The rest, not so much. 



I still can't believe Saint Lucy puts up with me.




For now, the skull sits on the hearth. 



I covered the last one with howlite, a sort of poor girl's turquoise.



I'm going to try to electrify this one and turn it into a wall sconce,
as long as Smooch doesn't get to it first.



16 comments:

  1. The jawbones look like a seagull to me! Having coyote-cleaned deer bones all over my yard speaks to the special talent of My Labradeer Retriever. "Mom!! Look what I found?" They are not quite as special as cow skeletons.

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  2. LOVE the sconce idea!

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  3. Lucy is such a good girl!

    Um, it's still a bit ripe and it's on the hearth? Do you have a destinkifying method?

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    1. It had been lying face down in the grass, so once I turned it over and let it air out in the sun, it wasn't too bad... though it did take lots of soap to get the stink off my hands.

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  4. Are you going to get the hide!? How bad is it? Cool idea for the light and I like what you did with the first skull. 🐄

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    1. Ixnay on the hide...it's beyond bad,

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    2. I just read, if you don't get to it in a couple of hours, forget it. Oh well, still the coolest find.





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  5. When you start having to walk around piles of cow bones in the house, we will know you have a problem. For now - too totally cool. Lucy abides.

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  6. Yes, Linda, you're our kind of girl. I love what you did with the jawbones over the hearth. Now I'm going berserk wondering what we did with the deer jawbones that decorated our wood table on the deck. *lol* You have been following the "Skull-A-Day" blog, haven't you? Even though it's now not being updated since Noah began his second book, you can still see all those lovely skulls. I even made it to the blog twice with my paintings. Can't wait to see what else you'll make when Lucy hauls home some more of your poor old cow.

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  7. Aunt Jean might suggest you charge a huge amount and sell the howlite-covered skulls to designers. But that might develop into a full-time thing, so never mind.

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  8. I love the howlite skull! An artist who does art fairs in my area completely covered a steer skull with broken auto windshield safety glass. Sounds ordinary, but those little blue-green cubes of glass glittered like precious stones, and it was very cool!

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    Replies
    1. What a great idea. A broken windshield is now on my next-trip-to-town list.

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  9. Ooh, the glass sounds pretty and as a sconce even nicer! I think it had my name on it... Someplace underneath.... Jealous!!

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  10. An American in Tokyo10/13/15, 7:27 PM

    I like how you covered that one with howlite! Very pretty!

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  11. awww... poor Lucy..........

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