This is an awesome skull, Seals have amazingly thick skulls, no doubt to help keep their brains warm. My friend Katie found this skull on a Southern California beach, Unfortunately, it was still inside the head of the seal.
At least the seal was dead.
Unfortunately, Katie found this seal on a clean-the-beach day, so she was surrounded by a bunch of hippies (note: I have nothing against clean beaches or hippies). Fortunately Katie had an implement of destruction. Unfortunately it was her brother's buck knife.
So, for 20 minutes Katie struggled manfully to hack the head off of a dead seal while being watched by dissaproving hippies (clean ones, at least).
She bagged the head up and brought it back to Northern California. One thing about putting dead things in bags is that they really start to go to hell. By the time Katie was back to San Leandro (Not where she really lived, but believe it or not San Leandro is BETTER than where she really lived, so I'll use it) the head was getting fairly ripe. Katie also had no idea how to clean the thing, and she could not ask the only expert she knew, that is to say me, because she intended the skull to be my birthday present.
When she tried to boil the flesh off, the first things that surfaced were all the maggots. This is pretty damned unappealing, a thing I say from having had a similar experience.
Boiling didn't work, so she tried to barbeque the flesh off. She lives on a tightly packed hillside, and in about 20 minutes this effort brought the next door neighbors down threatening to call the police.
Next, she tried burying the head. This actually worked, a little bit, since that night her dog snuck out the back, unburied the seal's head (can we still call it the "seal's" head at this point, or has it been severed from all relations with the original seal?) and managed to eat quite a bit of its flesh. The family woke up, induced vomiting in the dog, and took it to the vet.
Finally, Katie came upon a solution (literally) that worked -- she put the skull in a pot of water and as the water turned black and full of rotted, loose flesh, she emptied it and refilled it with fresh water.
If she hadn't used one of her mother's favorite pots, this might have been an unqualified success.
Who Am I? |
What Do I Do? | What
Do I Believe? | Artifacts
From a Distant Shore
back home