Zooarchaeology and Family Living

Afarensis has nailed the, shall we say "eccentricities" of zooarchaeologists here. After one of the commenters to my blog relayed a story about collecting bones Afarensis followed up with one of his own. I love the idea of zooarchaeology stories, so by all means post here or at Afarensis and let's see how many we can get. The intersection between zooarchaeologists and their families and friends is particularly ripe ground. I have some blogging "catch-up" to do, so I won't post at length at the moment, but here are some teasers from my adventures in bone collection:

1) as Afarensis notes, maintaining a "zooarchaeological collection kit" complete with bags, labels, pens, buckets, etc. at all times in your truck because your wife REFUSES to allow you to put dead animals in hers (I missed a beautiful racoon on the side of the road the other day because of this...);

2) having a bone processing station in your backyard, in town, within site (and smell) of neighbors, and more to the point, actually designing it into your landscaping plan;

3) listening to your wife explain to her friends how, for years we actually had a "wall of bones" in our apartment;

4) yelling at your daughter (and then apologizing profusely!!) for having accidently knocked over (and forever mixing!) the two boxes of snake bones (one rattlesnake, one gopher snake) Daddy had balanced precariously on the edge of the table;

5) redeeming yourself with your daughter by helping her to "excavate" a cat skeleton in a nearby park in full view of joggers and bikers;

6) getting rid of the wall of bones for your wife, but now listening to her explain the poor Georgia O'Keefe imitation decor around the house using skulls O'Keefe never dreamed of;

7) boiling a deer head on the kitchen stove and thinking you could get rid of the smell by adding onions (Honey, it's no different than cooking a stew!!!);

8) leaving a blood trail across the parking lot of the Forest Service office from the cooler your buddy had given you containing an elk head;

9) having a good friend excitedly giving you a tour of the piece of property he just bought, only to have you mostly ignore him while collecting a mountain lion deer kill you happened to stumble across;

10) And finally, I don't have a story about falling in love over a "boiling jackrabbit carcass" that pughd posted on my previous blog, but that one's just too good to not mention....

More to come, but it's probably too close to meal time for most of you...