Boiling an opossum head....

What do you do when you have a 5 year old son who is very interested in skulls and fossils, and you happen to find some when you are out and about?  You collect them, build a shelf, and let him display them in his room.  Well, what do you do when you find a very recent opossum as roadkill just past your house?  Well, obviously your love your son so very much that you send your husband down to saw off the head and collect it, after going on line to see how you can speed up the process of decomp.

The results to that question I found on a great tutorial here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Taxidermy-Skull-Preparation/step3/De-Fleshing-with-boiling-or-soaking/

Well, we finally had some free time, so we decided to try it out.  Be prepared to possibly be grossed out.

The head...before bboiling...gross huh?

Next, we pull  out the grill, and get a pot of water boiling, then in he goes:

Ah, yes, there's that guy preparing to be a bones and no skin!

 

 

After checking on his off and on for several hours, we were pleasantly pleased to find the tutorial to be quite accurate and him to be mostly decomposed....just a few bits to clean up, and he'll be ready for display!

Pretty cool. We'll have to adhere the jaw to the skull, but that's science at work for you!