A couple of weeks ago, I participated in the SW Kiln Conference in Safford AZ. It was masterfully arranged by Andy Ward on the grounds of the East AZ College at Discovery Park, complete with lectures, demos, and of course about a dozen firing ventures.
Kira loves crowds of nice people, pottery events and fire, so she got to go too
She behaved well, usually just following me around or greeting folks. But then she took off across an empty lot towards what? A log dropped by the wood collecting crew for the kilns? No, she would not enthusiastically roll on wood. Well, it turned out to be her early contribution to halloween, luckily so mummified that she didn't even pick up a stink, at least not for our human noses. She herself felt obviously great about her new perfume. Now I wanted the interesting scull of the mummy, but it was so hard and leathery that not even super sharp stone flakes from the arrow tip makers could cut through it. So I packed up the entire thing. Surprisingly, this group of people accepted my goulish idea as normal enough and contributed advice and packing material. Bill Warner suggested to soak the mummy in a strong lye of wood ash and water. From my own kiln experiments I have lots of fine ash. So at home, I made the concoction rather strong - it discouraged the coyotes that opened up my bucket during the first night but then never returned. Today I finally gathered my courage and fished a now pretty clean scull from the stinking brew. From the lye I moved it to a chlorine bath and then hydrogen peroxide. Whatever killed this animal - now it's nicely sterilized. To my naturalist friends: whose scull is it? To all others: Happy Halloween!
Solving the mystery: it's and American Badger (Taxidea taxus)
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