ENTRY: Lisa Pawley

“Eww!” This is the typical reaction I get from my fourteen year old daughter and her friends when they pass by my curio cabinet or happen to accidentally view my latest project.

For as long as I can remember I've been collecting skulls and animal parts. Some pieces are on display in my own collection and others are used in my artistic endeavours. It's not uncommon to find dried bird feet lined up on my desk alongside beetle wings, various teeth, claws and bits of bone. My adventures with taxidermy have been a lifelong journey, but my greatest undertaking happened two years ago when I received an unexpected text message from my daughter who was walking to the bus stop after school.

“Found a dead squirrel 4 u,” the message read and there was a file attached. When I opened it, I saw a blurry photograph of what appeared to be a clump of black fur with some white bone protruding from it. Upon her arrival home, the whole family got into the car and went on a squirrel collecting road trip. Up until that point, most of the bones in my collection had been bought rather than found, so this would be a new experience for me as well.

We located the partially mummified body a few blocks from the school. The fact that it was on private property next to a very busy city street made me hesitate for a moment, concerned about what people might think of the crazy woman picking up dead things, but I soon cast my worries aside and dashed in to claim my prize. I ran back to the car with the bag in my hand in my children in tow – all of us giggling madly as if we'd just managed to get away with the perfect crime.

Too impatient to macerate, I donned my latex gloves as soon as we were home and picked the squirrel bones free from the brittle flesh. These and the head went into an old pot and onto the kitchen stove to simmer. The smell of cooked squirrel is unforgettable, but in a few hours, I had a mostly clean skull, some vertebrae, hip bones, femurs and ribs. I left these out on my desk to dry.

Early the next morning as I was packing lunches for school, I found my daughter photographing the bones with her phone camera. When I asked why she was doing this, she told me that she wanted to show her friends what a squirrel looks like on the inside. Rather than the usual “eww” reaction, these young girls were fascinated by what had become of the squirrel corpse they passed every day on their way to school. They wanted to know where certain bones were found in the animal's body and they were interested in the cleaning process as well. Girls who were otherwise disgusted by my hobby were suddenly taking an interest in biology and anatomy!

Since then squirrel has become many things – hip bone earrings, vertebrae necklaces, ribs in a bottle and a skull in my curio cabinet, but the most valuable thing it became was an educational tool.

By Lisa Pawley