tiny things

thousands of little fish were washed up on the shores of the pueblo reservoir. my guess is either it is breeding or stocking season.

unbearable

we didn't have enough room in the freezers for the coyotes, so we stored them outside in garbage bags. a few months passed before we got around to defleshing them for the bugs, so they acquired a great deal of mold and the skin became very tight.

armed with masks, the smell from the rotted flesh was still borderline unbearable. the skin was so tight from dehydration (they originally sat in the colorado sun for many months at a taxidermist farm before we picked them up) that it took 4 hours just to deflesh one.

Box of family memories

I spent over 150 hours on the following Christmas project. It's finally done.

Step 1: Find old VHS family videos. Hook up VCR to recordable DVD player and hit 'play' and 'record'. Repeat 30 times.

Step 2: Transfer Video_TS files to computer. Convert these files to .DV files in Toast Titanium. Import into iMovie. Export movie. Repeat 33 times.

Step 3: It took 10 DVDs to fit 33 movies. I made 8 copies of each DVD, totaling out to 80 DVDs. I'm very happy my computer didn't die.

Step 4: Design and create 7 packages.

Step 5: Drop them off at FedEx.

melting

getting the frozen coyote ready to go into the beetles. if you put the carcass in without thawing it, you run the risk of drowning the beetles when it melts. it is ideal to let it melt in a sealed container to keep other bugs from contaminating the meat. dermisted beetles don't play well with others.

1. a horse head in need of de-fleshing before putting it into the beetles. had been stored in a garbage bag for a couple of weeks before this process.

2. a great deal of flesh was removed from the skull.

3. the most interesting part of the process was removing the brains. here you will see that they had turned to a white paste and were easily scraped out of the brain cavity.

coyote

horse project

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Getting a horse skeleton ready for re-articulation is an intense process. The excitement, stimulation and overall energy pulsating from the whole process left us sore, exhausted and mentally foggy.

The following photos show a brief over view of the process. For the less faint at heart, a video of the defleshing process is available here: Horse Carving Video

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7:30am: The young Palamino died by collicking and we picked it up about 16 hours later.
10am: The Element had the trailer backed up to the horse at an angle and I pulled the horse out by the hind legs onto the trailer by my front tow hooks.
10:30am: We drove up into National Forest out of the public's eye. It took about 8 hours to deflesh the entire horse.
8pm: Here is the ribcage and vertebrae intact. This was the hardest piece to get into the freezer.
8:30pm: 9 bags of bones, plus the vertebra. Not much of the 1100 pound horse is left.
10pm: Unfortunately, the head didn't fit in the garage freezer, so here it sits with the popsicles and frozen green beans.