bones

Recently I accidently got super into animal skulls.

Let me explain.

Last year my 20-year-old cat (Oscar) died. It was from an illness or infection related to old age, and she died 3 minutes before midnight while me, my younger sister, and my mom sat around a bonfire with her (that in itself was a strange story for another day).

As many of you know, my family and I live out in the country, so we naturally have a lot of wild predatory animals around us. And when one of our pets dies, we simply put their bodies out in the field to continue the cycle of life. C’est la vie.

This time with Oscar the cat was a bit different though, because, much to our surprise, a large predator (like a coyote or fox) didn’t take her body away. Instead, smaller carnivorous creatures helped break her body down, and mother nature did the rest of the cleanup. A few months later, there was simply a skeleton left. Literally. An entire cat skeleton. And I gotta say, it was incredibly fascinating to watch that whole natural process happen.

As you may be realizing by now, death is not a taboo subject in my house. In fact, it’s talked about and discussed quite frequently here. As my sister likes to say: the only thing that’s guaranteed to us in life, is death.

Oscar (2002-2022), Esther (2015-2022), Ruby (2014-2023)

Anyways, one day I bent down to really study the perfect little cat skull that now sat in the field, and I simply had to keep it. I mean, the perfection of something so small, something that had held the working brain and the bright green eyes of a cat that I had watched come into this world when I was four years old, and watched leave it twenty years later!?

Honestly, it was amazing.

I then proceeded to disinfect the skull, and whiten it in the hot summer sun. And yes, I got some very strange looks from some pretty hot delivery men (you no longer have to wonder why I’m single, babes).

By autumn it was sitting on a small shelf in my bedroom — perfectly preserved, and looking a bit too much like witchy shit™

my grampa has informed me that he had a skull collection in his youth as well, so maybe I inherited this from him, like I inherited the sixth sense for four-leaf clovers

Months later, when my beloved guinea pig Esther died in October, I knew I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to see what her rodent skull looked like! So, again, I let mother nature do her thing. Of course, this time dragged out a bit longer, as the decomposition process takes much more time in the winter…a fact that probably never crosses the mind of a normal person.

Finally, after many days of baking in the sun, her skull went up on my shelf next to Oscar’s.

And I think they’re perfect.

I mean, just think about it for a minute: this tiny little skull used to be what housed the soul of a tiny little creature who was filled with so much sassy personality, and excitement, and love, and joy.

This tiny little skull housed my best friend. And now it’s just the perfect shell that once held her and kept her alive.

I know, it probably seems crazy to a lot of people, but I love it. I think it’s incredible to think about. And to think that the same is true for us, as well. Not to be weird or anything, but we’re just like…little souls being held inside a frame of bones (okay, it may be a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea).

But back to my main subject of animal skulls: this year on Easter Sunday I also lost my beautiful hen Ruby to a weasel attack (it’s been quite a year, I know).

Now let’s not act like we don’t all have favorites when I say that Ruby was my favorite, ever since she was a fluffy little day-old chick. I can’t tell you how much happiness that bird brought me every day, and it was hard to adjust to a barn that lacked her presence.

So, I’m sure you can guess what I did next.

Now her fragile bird skull has joined the rest, and I think it’s so beautiful. Few things are more incredible to me than the size of birds’ eyes inside of their heads. How amazing are they!? I guess you need gigantic eyes to have such remarkable vision.

But anyways, I think if it’s normal for people to have boxes full of their dead dog’s ashes, it should be perfectly normal for me to have a shelf of my beloved pets’ skulls.

But even if it’s not normal, I’ve done it anyway. After all, being weird is my normal 💀❤