3D ANATOMY STUDIES

5 - Gray Squirrel the Squeakquel

Abigail Black 11/15/2023

	September 7, 2022	Having not heard the tragedy of Darth Rodentus the Wise, this one crossed the road and took a bumper to the head. I found it in the middle of the street, rescued the body before a truck could pulverize the bones, and placed it in the decomposition box. I discovered that old grocery bags beneath smaller corpses keep maggots from falling through the screen.
	September 11	The body attracted many flies. The resulting larvae were all-encompassing.
	September 13	Without the flesh holding the head together, it fell apart. The skin started drying out as well, exposing the ribcage and adjusting the limbs.
	August 25, 2023	No pictures of the harvest or curing, but I went through the motions of harvest, hydrogen peroxide bath, toothbrush scrub, and sunbath. The aluminum tin sat on my desk for several months until I had some spare time. I had gotten a plastic artist's Lazy Susan and it's a lovely shade of black which contrasts nicely with the white bones, making them much easier to see! So I organized the bones by location and limb. Some of the phalanges were missing, but that was expected.
	September 2	I glued the phalanges first. My favorite superglue is the small gray Gorilla version. It's not very drippy and while it takes several hours to fully harden I can let go of two bones after ten minutes and they won't come apart. It also peels off the plastic Lazy Susan without too much fuss. I used the same printout from the first squirrel to fix the skull.
	September 3	I got the vertebrae all in a line with the pelvis, tail, and ribs. Then, I flipped it onto its back so gravity settles the limbs in place, with a tape roll and the skull to keep it upright.
	September 4	Pay no attention to the extra mandible in the background! It belongs to a third squirrel who was hit in the body, not the head, so I was just keeping the skull for display and needed a place to put the mandible. I took some jewelry wire and made a loop in the center for a screw hole, then glued the two ends to the bottom of the feet. When that was dry, I glued on the skull.
	September 4	I took the skeleton outside in a cardboard box lid and sprayed it with polyurethane.
	September 4	I mounted the squirrel on a partition wall in my room and remembered far too late that squirrels splay their limbs when hanging onto a tree, but I'm still pleased with the result.