How I rearticulated my badger skeleton, part two

As promised, here is part two of how I rearticulated my badger skeleton. By the time I'd got to the stage which was the end of last weeks post, the skeleton did not look good, but I knew from before that if everything is in roughly the right place it would all come together.

So in his week's post I will go through the final stages to finish it off and tidy it up so it looks nice. This week I am going to show you how I rearticulated the front legs, back legs, feet, the tail and the carpals, tarsals and phlanges. (If you want a step-by-step guide, see the one I wrote last year about my fox skeleton Vulpy)

How I rearticulated my badger skeleton, part one

Right, this was going to be just one post, but it's so big I've split it into two. I did three big posts last year here, here and here about how I rearticulated my fox skeleton Vulpy, so I'm not going to do a step by step guide, but I will write about how I did each step. The big rush for this badger skeleton (called Emily) was that I had to take it up to the filming of BBC Winterwatch, and although I had about three week's notice, it was still a big rush. Rearticulating skeletons properly takes LOADS of time.

The picture at the top is a bit of a cheat. That's how I would really like it to look (it's been retouched). In reality it is VERY difficult to rearticulate a skeleton without any external wires or poles and while I'd love to do it that way, there are LOADS of problems.But I think the post is really good, even if I ended up at it by accident. Anyway, this is how I did it....

Rebuilding the skull of Emily the badger

This is the fifth post that I have written about my badger skeleton, Emily, who I found as a roadkill near my village. I left to decompose in Mortuary wood, checked her again in August, then finally had to collect her in December after a bad storm blew down the wood where she was hidden, before cleaning her.  This week I am going to talk about the skull and putting it back together again.   

The big surprise when I collected Emily was that although her head looked intact when I found her. Her skull had been massively fractured, as if she was just hit on the chin by a car or lorry when she stepped out to cross the road. When I first found her, I wasn't even sure if I could ever repair her skull, but I've done the best I can, and even though it's not perfect, I'm quite proud of how she looks.

How to rearticulate a fox skeleton: part two

Two weeks ago I posted about my finished rearticulated fox skeleton Vulpy, and last weekend I wrote about the first half of how I did it. In the first half of my guide I wrote about doing the spine, the back legs and front legs which may seem like a lot but it's still only half way there !

The final steps are the feet, the tail, the ribs and attaching the skull.

How to re-articulate a fox skeleton: part one

This is going to a big post about how I put my fox skeleton Vulpy back together. I started on 22nd December and took photographs at every stage, and I finished it on the 6th January after a LOT of hard work. I took photographs at every stage and while I had some help there were some bits I didn't get right first time.

Last week I wrote about it when it was finished, but here is the first of two big big posts about I did it. There may be better ways or different ways to do it, but this is how I did it....

My finished rearticulated fox skeleton !

My big project for the Christmas holidays was rearticulating (putting back together) my fox skeleton Vulpy. I finally got round to finishing it two nights ago and it took AGES but now it looks amazing.

When I first got Vulpy she was a present from a local gamekeeper who had shot her when she was killing lambs. So she started as a fresh body, then I buried her, left her for months, then dug her up when she was all clean. She's has been in one of my storage boxes since then but I thought she would be good to practice rearticulation on because I have almost every single bone from her.

Next week I'm write about every stage of how I did it (here it is now !), but this week I am going to show you how she looks now she is finished.

Seven things that bone collectors can do over winter

I was reading Julia's bone collecting blog about a month ago when she wrote about how winter makes it difficult for bone collectors to find bones. Where I live the winters can quite be bad. When it does snow the snow covers up the bones, its difficult to drive up to the hills, and stalking animals at close range is harder because of the crunch of the snow. Dad and I were exploring a new wood earlier in the week and even in the middle of the day it almost pitch black in the wood. Small patches of snow had fallen through here and there making it look like bones, and we both fell in a stream we couldn't see because of a snowdrift.

That started me thinking about what things bone collectors can do over the winter months. Here are my seven ideas.....