Lately I have been preparing animal skeletons for a professor in the department. I’ve had to develop a protocol for it, and I think it’s working quite well.
A key component of this is putting defleshed carcasses into The Bug Room. The bug room is a big galvanised steel box with a door that contains bugs. Shocking, I know. Basically the room is there to contain all sorts of creepy-crawlies but also provide an optimal dark, warm, humid environment. There are giant roaches in a tank that dash themselves against the glass in a skittering frenzy when you turn the light on. There are also crickets which are raised as food for other animals in the centre. Then there are the tanks I deal with. It smells bad, as you can imagine.
We are using dermestid beetles to clean the bones. These are carrion beetles, and when you put a fresh piece of carcass into the aquarium tank, all the creepy larvae squirm from their bedding and engulf the bone. They eat everything, flesh, cartilage, marrow. You do have to take the brains, eyes and other soft tissues out though because otherwise they liquefy and the larvae drown.
Let’s just say I had to deal with that up-close and personal when someone else prepared a carcass and forgot that little step. Dealing with it a day after the carcass had been sitting in a nice hot, damp room. I knew I was in trouble when I had the head of a putrefying coyote in my hand, larvae leaping off, and then suddenly brains and other unmentionable fluid coming out the nose. I started gagging uncontrollably (I forgot to add I had a horrible cold that day and so really wasn’t in the best of shape to begin with) and it was really touch or go if I could get the job done without puking all over the floor or dropping the head. It was very awful. The smell was about 50% worse than normal too. I can normally handle it, if with a couple supressed retches, but the Head incident was bad. Rotting brains really smell bad, so if the zombies come, wear a mask or else you will be puking instead of shooting or bludgeoning.
I can’t describe it. It is just Wrong. It’s every atavistic nightmare rolled up into our little primitive primate hindbrain: death = bad place to be, get out of there, scavengers are going to come and eat you too. The smell instantly covers your clothing and hair – I have taken some interested coworkers in to see the Bug Room (and I did warn them about the smell as I leapt over the barrier after unclamping the metal door) and universal disgust and horror has always been the result. James calls it “The Smell of Death”. I try and walk around outside after being in there, and not wearing good clothing, or wearing an over-sweater to absorb the worst of it. But it does get in the hair.
So if you ever see me furtively smelling my hair, now you know why.