#vulture ask

[arcanum-of-stars]

1, 13, 16 💀

1. When did you first start collecting?

I first got into VC and started collecting around April 2019

13. If you could have any animal part in your collection what would you want the most?

If I could have any animal part I want it would be a velociraptor skull, or even a toe claw. but if we’re talking about something actually possible, a (preferably female) grey Wolf skull

16. Is there anything you wish you’d have known when you first got into VC?

I wish I’d known just how many maggots I’d end up seeing or how sometimes you can mistake a maggot for a tooth 🤣

11/15/2020

[bones-are-neato]

Heyah ! What animal if you could would you macerate ? I (hope i used that word correctly. ) Personally, i would love to have a cat, snake or bird. I think they're neat.

Hi! If you're not sure what maceration is, it's a bone cleaning process for removing skin and flesh. You do this to get rid of the meat so you can continue cleaning by degreasing and whitening.

I'm assuming you mean what animal I would like to work on.

I'll work on almost anything but I've always wanted to have a coatimundi skull, bear skull, a big horn sheep skull and a turtle skull!

I would love to have a snake skull (an articulated snake skeleton would be super cool!) And other reptiles like that but they're just so small and fragile I'd be afraid to ruin them and/or loose pieces, so if I found one I'd probably send it to someone.

[did-you-say-bones]

Hey Vultures, I need some help!

I have a question about VC and safety for the more experienced Vultures out there.

I recently told my mother about my interest in VC, specifically working with roadkill. She was... displeased, to say the least, and her main argument was the fear of disease from the animals. I tried to tell her that I understood her concern, but it was not a huge risk where we live, but to no avail. She is convinced that if I tried to work with dead animals, I would get horribly sick.

That’s where you all come in.

If you have any resources (reputable papers, preferably,) or anything about VC safety in general, they would be greatly appreciated. This is a community and activity I want to be a part of, but I need your help to do it.

[arcanum-of-stars]

aren’t mink and martens the same

Nope, they’re in the same family but not the same animal. Here’s a mink which are actually semi-aquatic

And here’s a pine marten which is normally arboreal and more around the size of a cat

Also going to include these bonus pictures of my meeting with a mink for a bit of reference. I was home alone and heard a squeak, assumed one of the cats caught a rat but to my surprise a mink did and my cat spotted the mink.

[arcanum-of-stars]

My cat keeps killing blue jays and there’s like 3 rn in my yard and I wanna preserve them as skeletons but I’m a beginner and never took part in vulture culture. Do I skin the birds before maceration? I don’t know if I can stomach it But the cats do most of the process of tearing the birds apart and eating a good portion of the meat and muscles on the bone, so I don’t know if I really even have to ? And would skinning be more difficult for a noob with mangled prey like this?

Blue Jays are protected by the MBTA so unfortunately if you’re in the US or Canada you’ll have to leave them where they are

If you live where the MBTA doesn’t apply it all depends on the state of the bird

If it’s fresh (No smell, no maggots or anything like that) You can try to skin it to make it go faster but if your cats have mangled them and you don’t have the stomach you can just put it in whatever container you’re using for maceration, you’ll just have to take out any feathers as it starts to decompose or you can leave the overall skin and just pluck as many feathers off as you can/want to

If you do want to try skinning I can give you this link to a little tutorial from another VC blog because I myself haven’t skinned a full bird and I just left the head as it was when macerating so I wouldn’t be able to tell you how to do it.

https://vultureculturecoyote.tumblr.com/post/181353601228/how-do-you-skin-birds-while-preserving-the

Vulture Culture Coyote

How do you skin birds while preserving the feathers? Hmm, I wasn’t sure how exactly to explain it so I made a super simplified illustrated t

In the end it’s up to personal preference how you want to go about processing and what you can handle doing, just make sure anything you pick up is legal where you live and you’re comfortable when working on anything you have

[arcanum-of-stars]

Hi hello hey yes so uh am a new vulture, hope I'm not bugging you with my question but how do you decompose an animal body when it's cold? (It won't do it itself because it's cold here outside and I'm not allowed to bring it inside lol) help-

Sorry if this is a late response, Tumblr doesn’t like to give me notifications at all. I think the only ways to get stuff done in cold weather is indoor maceration (smaller things) or using a bucket and an aquarium heater.

If you have a garage that’s well insulated you might be able to macerate it with or without the heater, depending on how cold it gets in there or unless that still technically counts as “inside.” If that’s not possible then the bucket and heater would be the only way to start processing the body. Cold slows down decomposition so burying it won’t do anything except more than likely keep freezing it. It sucks but the cold weather stops you from being able to process things and if you aren’t able to do it with a bucket and heater then you’ll just have to wait until the weather warms up.