ossamenta

I'm not quite sure if I had any particular plans for this Friday evening, but when my colleague came in with a robin that he had found dead outside (probably the first casualty of the windows of the new enviromental processing shed), I knew any plans would be cancelled. Skeletal preparation is not my favourite activity, but beggars can't be choosers, particularly if they aren't rich enough to buy their specimens, nor in possession of a garden to bury carcasses in.

This was the smallest animal I've prepped, and I can't say I'd love to do it again. Well, plucking the feathers was very quickly done, but as for the rest: fragile, tiny bones that I really didn't want to damage when I was removing flesh and guts. It's halfway done now: most of the meat on the limbs are gone, tendons remaining. The spine and the head are a pain in the neck to get clean (small and fragile) and the kidneys are fiddly to remove from the synsacrum. Hopefully an overnight soak will make it easier. I really don't want to spend too much of the weekend cleaning teeny tiny bones.