The five foot deer skull

The other night G and I went on an adventure to get some fairly awsome things. These awsome things were 3 deer skulls and one ram skull.

I posted an ad on Craigslist looking for free, clean deer skulls. I wanted them for a project and I didn't want hunting trophies. I didn't expect that anyone would want to give away anything for free but someone finally answered my ad. You can pretty much find anything on Craigslist... This guy said he had lots of skulls and that they were all clean. He said

"Oh yeah, I just find them everywhere in my backyard and on the highway. Then I throw them on the red ant pile and that cleans them up good." Alas, in spite of two occasionally gory internships at animal rehab centers, I don't have the stomach to retrieve bones from the side of the road, nor do I have access to a large red ant pile. So I arranged to come to his house and pick up the skulls.

G was like, "I'm coming with you - this guy could be a psychopath." So Thursday night we found ourselves driving all over of the place, trying to locate this guy's place. G was getting increasingly agitated because we were lost (again) but after about 1/2 an hour of being lost we found the road. We drove for another ten or fifteen minutes down this road and as we drove the properties become shabbier and further apart. I was thinking "I'm going to be murdered, just for some stupid deer skulls." I'm pretty sure G was thinking the same but niether of us said anything because we were also thinking "well, we did drive all this way..." Finally, we saw the place. It was dark but we could see someone leaning on the porch, so we knew it was the place we were looking for. The driveway was very steep and muddy so we had to park at the top and walk down. Then we spotted a large darkened figure leaning against the porch railing. It was my craigslist friend.

"You found it." He said and then he turned on the porch light.

This is the really hilarious part. The man was gorgeous. He looked a bit like a young Paul Newman, except with more muscles. He immediately handed me a box of skulls and said "I've got one that's five by five in the house if you want" I was thinking "He could come out with a skull or he could come out with a murder weapn" But I said

"Sure, if you're willing to give it up." For some reason I was imagining a skull that is five feet by five feet and I was very excited about this prospect. I guess my logical brain had completely shut off at that point and I had forgotten that a. There could be no deer skull that big, EVER unless it was prehistoric and b. the deer on this island are actually extra small. Their heads are about the size of a whippet's and I know this for sure because I have personally fed 26 of them with bottles (deer not whippets). But for some reason I forgot these facts, and I was a little disappointed when he came out with a regular size skull with extra big antlers. He was talking about five prongs on the antlers. Of course. After that we chatted some more and discovered that his sister and I are both waitresses at the same restaurant. This established some trust and he invited us inside to see his other skulls. Oh yes, there was more!

It turns out the house was this gorgeous West Coast style place, with vaulted ceilings, lots of windows, native art, that kind of thing.

"As you can see I have no shortage of dead animals" he said and laughed.

This is true. There was a wolf pelt hanging on the side of the railing and an array of former stags mounted to the wall.

Next he brought us into the basement into a little cement room. In the room there was an spread of bow hunting equipment, meticulously organized and displayed on the top of a glass cabinet. Inside the cabinet, there was a pile of skulls. He showed us all of them and told us the story of how each one was found or killed. There was even a Grizzly skull. It turns out he is one of these people who benefit financially from BC's lack of protection for wildlife, by taking rich Americans out on hunting expeditions. But he seemed to have a weird, scientific fascination with his skulls.

As we were preparing to leave and thanking him, I noticed there was an abrupt cement wall that looked sort of out of place somehow. It jutted out a bit from the wall beside it, like you'd expect there to have been a door there at some point. A door which might lead to a storage closet or crawl space, but instead there is this wall. I was staring at the wall and of course my mind immediately turned to thoughts of hidden dead bodies with clean, red ant-picked bones embedded in the cement. Then something really creepy happened. I looked up and he was just staring at me with this wierd little smile. I couldn't figure out if it meant "Yes, I know I look a lot like a young Paul Newman!" Or "Yes, you've figured it out, there are dead bodies in that wall, now get the hell out before you become one"

I have never been very good at reading people's faces. In any case I now have four awsome skulls to study. The ram skull looks like a devil. I can't really draw it or leave it out of the box much because it gives me the creeps.