Animal Medicine
As anyone who’s ever done a home renovation or build project knows: everything takes longer than than you think it will. Such is the case with our current roofing project. We’re coming down to the wire here at EM, as we’ll be heading south back to Deer Park Monastery in a little over a week from today. Thankfully, Mike is a professional roofer by trade and skill, so we’re in the best of hands. We’re hoping to get the roof on and the woodstove put in before we head out for the winter. And, whelp, we’re already talking about maybe having to wait for the woodstove install until we get back in the spring. We’ll see what we can manage to get done!
Some highlights of this past week include: our son Jaden driving over from his newfound dwelling place in Portland, OR and being the first person to stay overnight in the hermitage; finishing up processing a deer skull I scavenged off of a deer carcass at the head of our road (read more below); finally making it a point to stop in at the ranger station in Superior to pick up a local map of the forest service roads, trail heads, and nearby lakes; taking a lovely fall drive down Trout Creek Road over Hoodoo Pass into Idaho; taking a motorcycle ride to the 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar. (Side note. There’s a diner there too and no, they do not serve all day breakfast. Insert sad face here. So Mike & I’s quest for a place nearby that does all day breakfast continues.) Also, as another side note: the lovely drive we took down Trout Creek was in search of Missoula Lake, which, we discovered later after regaining cell service & access to google maps, was actually down Cedar Creek Road and not Trout Creek. Point of order: this happy accident of a lovely drive we took was before acquiring the Lolo National Forest Superior Ranger District map. So now when we head out in search of new sights on our extensive network of local mountain roads without cell service, we can whip out our paper map and figure out where the heck we are! Bonus!
Pic above: Trout Creek
For those who are interested, here’a a little bit more info about the deer skull I mentioned above. HEADS UP: I’m aware this section might not be up the alley of some of my vegetarian/vegan friends. If details about such things as dead animals is upsetting for you, you might want to end your reading session here.
Not long after we closed on our land here at EM, on July 1, a deer was, I presume, hit by a car at the head of our road. Given how few people live around where we do, there was no highway patrol - or whatever agency deals with such matters - to shuttle away the dead deer. Instead, it just rested in place for the better part of the summer. For two-months or so, we’d pass by it every time we’d leave or return home. And much to our surprise, it stayed relatively in tact the whole summer, despite the bugs and occasional scavenger birds that would swoop in.
As time went by, I started thinking about possibly gathering up the skull. But given that it still had all of its skin and fur still attached, I was reluctant to undergo the process of figuring out how to strip it and process it for safe keeping.
Mike and I both put stock in animal medicine. We believe that honoring animals comes in many forms and is a worth while endeavor to undertake. We are feather finders and keepers and animal bone collectors. Mike’s personal animal is the fox. Mine are crows & ravens. My draw to the deer skull was to honor the local deer population, some of our most prolific land ancestors. I wanted to invite deer medicine to join us in helping to hold the space here on the land of Empty Mountain.
Then, one day at the end of September, literally overnight, the deer carcass went from what we’d grown accustomed to as it’s regular state, to being ravaged by what we assume was a hungry pack of coyotes. With the coyotes having performed much of the work I was not wanting to do, the skull was almost fully stripped and exposed. I gathered up some supplies, including an assortment of tools in order to sever the skull from the spine, which I thought I might need, and headed to the carcass. Mike joined me too, as he wanted to see the stark difference that took place overnight I had told him about. It took only a little effort, and no tools, to separate the skull from the body. Still, it was definitely a first for me. It required a rallying of some inner resolves for sure.
With the skull in hand, I then had to set to work learning how to prepare it for preservation purposes. I was also acutely aware that we live in bear country, so just leaving it out in the open was not a thing I felt comfortable doing. I also didn’t want another animal to find it and cart it off somewhere. Besides, it would take quite a while, at least in this climate, to prepare a skull for safe keeping (translation: smell & bug free) by just leaving it outside to cure.
I looked up skull preservation techniques online and followed the instructions I found. I boiled the skull to get rid of the remaining skin and other animal matter. In fact, I wound up boiling it twice cuz I didn’t boil it long enough the first time. Then I soaked the skull in a bucket of water mixed with dish soap, to eliminate the remaining grease. I soaked it for a few days, changing out the water once a day and adding fresh soap each time. I also scrubbed the skull in between soakings. Then, as I read to do, I dried the skull out and super glued in the teeth that were starting to fall out.
The final step was to soak the skull with high concentrated hydrogen peroxide (HP). The ratio I found online was to do 10-14oz of 35% HP per 5 liters of water. As a matter of reference, the HP you can buy at any local pharmacy or grocery store is 3%. Being new to all of this, I hopped online and special ordered the highest concentrate of HP I could find, which clocked in at 12%. Note: were I to do this again, I think I’d just buy a bunch of 3% HP and dilute it with way less water. My natural instinct was to use liquid bleach, but from what I read, bleach can damage the bone and teeth.
I was instructed to soak the skull for at least 24-hours in the HP/water solution and wound up soaking it for five-days. Since it wasn’t completely submerged, I soaked each side (top, bottom, left & right) for one day, turning it each day in a new direction. The fifth day was just cuz I forgot about it. It was really interesting to watch the skull change and whiten up in the HP bath. I finished with the whole process just a few days ago, and yesterday, I found some wire to string the jaw bones to the skull, to hold the whole thing together. I added a piece of extra wire to the back and now it hangs inside our hermitage, at least for the time being. I’d like to research proper ways to reattach the jaw bone to the skull, as while my wire wrap job suffices for now, it’s pretty janky and not the best looking. Once we add a covered porch to the hermitage next year, I’d like to maybe mount the skull somewhere on the outside of our little dwelling.
During the whole process of handling and preparing the skull, I put myself in relationship and communion with the deer, thanking her for being part of our lives and treating her with reverence. What a gift it is to be in such close contact with the out of doors here at EM. To be impacted and touched deeply by the animals, plants and trees; the earth and the sky. We are temporary caretakers of this land and we inherit a great responsibility. May we do our very best to care well for this land and its many beings. A-ho.