When to unbury a carcass? (If it was buried in the fall?) /The Fox Project/
My first fresh, whole body rot down carcass experience is now collected.
At the beginning of this fall, I received a call from a friend who said he had run into a fresh fox carcass while dog walking in the forest. I wanted an adult fox for a long while now - I have a juvenile one, but not an adult. And from an artistic standpoint foxes are very interesting, because on the outside they look like they have a wolf-like skull, but nothing is farther from the truth, so this fox would be a very prized member of my reference collection.
The only problem was that we were right at the beginning of fall- that means everything that helps the rotting process was just about to halt. I couldn't leave her out in the open, so I had to relocate her, but did I want to take the head and clean it in the fast way or clean in the slow way?
Let's talk a bit about the fast and slow ways!
With the fast way, I could just chop off the head right at the atlas, bag it, take it home, skin it, deflesh it, and either way macerate it - I do have a heater for it - or even boil it. Yes, I know boiling is easy to fuck up and ruin bones, but sometimes I do use boil. I boiled a small rat skull, because burying left me with a fall-apart tiny rat skull (that I glued together, but oh God, I don't want to re-live the experience). But defleshing a skull by hand won't give me a 100% clean end result, because there are places that I simply cannot reach. Macerating is not my favourite method, because of very smelly reasons - but sometimes I have no other choice.
The slow method, however, is simple - just bury the fox, mark the place, try to secure it the best you can and wait.
The first method is fast and secures the skull, sure as hell I won't loose the skull or teeth. The second is cleaner, but I can lose the whole carcass anytime, and the question is when to unbury it without giving myself nightmares is also on.
At the end the species of the carcass made the decision: this is a fox. And even if rabies is rare where I live, we still have it and sure as hell I won't skin a wild animal without knowing the COD for sure - my best bet is she was killed by a human, foxes with rabies tend to hide before dying. She was found very close to a farm with chickens, so I think the farm owner either shot her or poisoned her - she died next to the creek, probably got caught drinking or went to drink bc of rat poison. But I couldn't know for sure. So, gloves on, bagged her and went to bury her.
But for how long?
After burying her, I went out on the internet to collect some data about how long it takes for a medium-sized, fully intact, non-skinned animal to rot down underground, starting with the cold months. Found Jake's blog and he happened to have a very similar project to mine - a whole, intact fox he buried right at the beginning of the fall - if I recall correctly - without skinning. He let his fox rot down for a whole year and at the end, he pulled out a whole, clean skeleton: no fur, no skin.
Well, Jake is living in Scotland. Scotland is slightly colder and definitely wetter than my country, but overall we have very similar weather. If his fox took a whole year to decompose fully, mine probably takes the same amount of time. But if I am paranoid - and I often am, lost some great finds in nature before - I can give my fox a visit in 6 months maybe. I only wanted the head, but Jake wanted the whole skelly for his project.
Fast forward 6 months, things went well, the fox remained undisturbed, and I felt like maybe the skull is in a collectible state, so yesterday evening nagged the husband into checking on the fox.
This will be easy, I thought. We know where she is, I thought. Just digging a bit and pulling out clean bones, I thought.
Yeah, I was an idiot.
The place was there, still undisturbed, everything went fine, moving the logs away, we put on her, to make things harder for fellow foxes to dig her out. And I started to dig. And dig. And dig. And when I didn't find any trace of her, I started to get worried.
What I did find was tons of bugs - the forest soil is extremely rich and living. Perfect choice to let a girl with a bug phobia dig - I literally scream-jumped every five minutes, whenever something slimy moved as I uncovered it. But this is my hobby, and the hobby has dark moments as well.
But after that hour, I really started to turn blue. I really wanted this fox, and I knew bones can change places when you bury them, but they are literally disappearing??? I totally thought I lost a whole freaking fox in the forest. Plus, I also wanted to go an hour before sunset, because this will be an easy job, and won't take long. So we were out there, in the forest, digging and occasionally screaming in the cold and dark like idiots, while I developed a small emotional breakdown over losing a skull. This was the point when the husband decided we won't go home without finding the bones, and he found her literally within 5 minutes. I should let him dig right from the start.
How I imagined finding her was we find some fur, because creatine is the last to go (not counting the bones) and with luck that's it, no horror, just bones. What we got however was the fur, the bones and the freaking skin still clinging to life. Skin is always the thoughtest part of the body, it just refuses to step into oblivion. But considering we buried this lady, all intact at the beginning of the cold months, spent 6 months underground, with a relatively mild winter, it was enough for all the soft tissues, organs, flesh, everything to be fairly gone. Except the skin.
All in all, we found the skull, collected the skull, sadly lost 3 small teeth - had no chance to find them - and a canine, but I found the canine. Brought home, washed, hopefully did not lose any more teeth - double checked, so I have to have them all - and now she is degreasing. Which will be several weeks probably - I could see on the teeth they still have stuff inside them, but somehow hoped the skull was finished with the marrow. As it looks like, that's not the case, tons of grease are releasing from the skull and degreasing always takes ages without heavy chemicals.
Conclusion
If you buried something medium-sized, fresh, and intact at the beginning of the cold months, and are wondering when you can unbury it:
Depends on the weather, but if you have a winter where the average temperature is below the freezing point, but not above 10 Celsius, the rotting will still take place relatively speedy - enough for all the organs and flesh to go. This means 6 months. So all fall and winter. You can give a try to unbury the carcass, if you are ready to deal with the degrease that's coming and the sight of the still rotting skin. Teeth will be loose, watch out for them!
Degreasing. 6 cold months apparently is not enough to get rid of the marrow totally. This means you still have to do a full degreasing round. Depending on what you use, this can mean months. If you don't want to deal with that much grease, I'd leave the carcass underground for a whole year. (But if I recall, Jake also spent long weeks with degreasing after a year of rotting down his fox.)
If you have colder weather than this - freezing, snowing, minus degrees - I would definitely wait until next fall to unbury, just to be sure, so a whole year spent underground.
Mark the spot! And not just the area where you buried - the spot where you put the carcass! Take photos of the carcass in what position you put it on the ground, where the head is, etc! It caused some real pain to find her, where she is exactly, and then which end is which. Bones move over time, but not under this short amount of time - probably everything will be where you left it.
DO NOT go out to unbury the carcass right before sunset. You don't know how much you have to look for the carcass. If you are worried about being spotted, pick a period of the day when people is not around - dawn or morning.
Gloves (spare pairs too!), bag, and hand sanitizer are a MUST! Rabies is not a problem with tissue gone, but you can still get an infection from the juices.
That's it for now, the project goes on. I will probably degrease the bones for weeks now. As for disinfection, sadly I don't have liquid peroxide, only cream. Still looking for the liquid one, but ever since I cannot make sure the cream will cover every inch of the skull, I prepare to boil the skull a tiny bit. I am extremely cautious with boiling though - I am not cooking, just disinfecting. Plan to give her a 10-minute long simmer bath (max) depending on the bones. I boiled my juvenile longer - as my first skull, I had no idea how long I should do it - and the skull is still perfectly fine, not damaged, so 10 mins won't kill my adult fox either.
Will come back with updates though!