My favourite bits of 2012, and thank you !

It's New Years Eve and I've now been bone collecting for six years - crickey ! - and writing this blog for 3 and a half years. It has been fun but tough at times, and I'm looking forward to the twelve months.

There is some really interesting and amazing stuff I have been working on but I can't tell you about you just yet, but here are the best bits from 2012....

My ten most popular posts of 2012

It's coming to the end of 2012 so I thought I would do a post on the most popular posts I have written this year. I was very surprised by the results ! Some of my favourites are in there but there are other ones (like exploring the deserted castle or my post on seeing white tailed sea eagles on Skye) which I thought would be in the top ten.

Actually all my posts were popular this year with about 75,000 visitors and comments on every single post apart from one (this one). Anyway here in reverse are the ten most popular posts I wrote this year....

Happy Christmas to everyone !

Happy Christmas to everyone ! I am spending it at home and at grandmas in Scotland. I hope you have a good Christmas and get all the things you ask for.

We don't have snow here at the moment but this robin was in the woods a few weeks ago when we did have snow.

My bone project for the Christmas break is....

Did I get it wrong about the injuries to Pharoah ?

For the last few weeks I have been writing about a fox skeleton I found in Northern Ireland which had some unusual pathology (which means features) on the bones. My first post was about cleaning them up, my second post was looking at the whole skeleton, and the third post was about some damage to the shoulder blade which I thought was a bite mark, and that I thought the suspect was another fox (who I put in jail at the end of the last post !)

After I wrote these, Ben Garrod of Ben's Bones sent me a message on my Facebook fan page saying that he he disagreed with me and he had different ideas about what happened. This happens a lot in science and good scientists always show how they came up with theories or ideas so other scientists can agree or disagree with them. So this last post on Pharoah is about what he what he thinks and what I think so you can make up your own mind in the comments at the end:

So which suspect is guilty of biting Pharoah ?

This is the third and last post almost the last post (see my note at the end) that I am writing about Pharoah the fox skeleton that I originally found in Northern Ireland in 2009. Two weeks ago I wrote about rotting the mummified body down to get the skeleton, and last week I wrote about what I found when I examined the bones.

Pharoah had a tough life. Last week I wrote about how I thought he had damage to one leg, arthritis in one knee,  he had lost a lot of upper teeth through some kind of damage (vets call it trauma) and one of the most interesting things was damage to the left shoulderblade which I think I have worked out was an old bite mark that had rehealed.

I will never now for sure if I'm right, but I thought it might be interesting to see if I can work out what animal had bit Pharoah the fox, causing the bite mark. So this week's post is about me doing a kind of scientific experiment to work out which suspect was to blame !

The six things I learned from Pharoah's post-mortem

Last week I wrote about how I rotted down the mummified body of Pharoah (I name my skeletons in alphabetical order) which was a canid that I brought back from Northern Ireland. It took me ages to rot down but when I did I discovered something interesting: it was not a dog which I had thought for two years, but a fox !

How did I know it was a fox and not a dog ? Foxes and dogs are both from the canid family, and they are the only two types of canids you find in the wild in the UK. In other places you can find other canids like wolves, coyotes and jackals. Here are the signs I looked for to tell a fox and dog apart:

The bones that took two-and-a-half years to clean

Out of all the bones I have had, this one has been the longest to write about ! Above are the bones a week or so ago (and an atlas bone from a seal as well !) but it took two-and-a-half years to get them like this. These bones are so interesting that I have written three posts about what I did and what I found.

When I was in Northern Ireland in April 2010 Granddad said he had found something. He asked if I was interested in some dog bones. I said definitely yes, so we went in the car together and then walked into a deserted field. He showed me where it was. It was underneath a hay bale, and I thought it would just be bones, but it was mummified which is not the prettiest thing to see. That's why the next picture you need to click on it and hold down to see it properly, and don't do it while you're eating your dinner !

Three things that will help me be a better scientist

This is a very quick post about three new things I've been doing that help me with my collection and make me a better bone collector. They are techniques that museums and universities use and it's good for me to start using them now because my collection is getting so big it's getting confusing !

The last few weeks I've been catching up and going through my entire collection with them. And the three things are....

Abraham, my new otter skeleton

For ages I have wanted to have an otter skeleton. I came so so close to getting one a few years ago but I  was stopped by the police when dad was far too honest. Then three months ago I got an email from a really nice man called Mr Evans who is a retired museum curator in the north of Scotland.

He had read about me in the Times and he gave me some useful advice and he said that he had an otter skeleton that I could have if I wanted. I said I would love to have it ! It took ages to arrange to get it (I'll explain why below) then about three weeks ago he called down and dropped it off !

My brilliant new clever invention for cleaning bones

For ages I have been thinking of a better way of cleaning bones with biological washing powder. I have been using biological washing powder to clean for almost two years now after it was recommended when I visited Perth Museum. I wrote more about it in my complete guide to cleaning bones, but the way it works is it contains enzymes which eat away and dissolve fat. 

Up until now the way now I have been putting the bones to be cleaned in a plastic container, adding the biological powder, then adding hot (not boiling) water then leaving it for a while, then adding a new lot of hot water and powder. The problem is that when the water cools it doesn't clean as well so it takes lots of changes of water.

So I have been thinking for ages for a way to do it easier, where it's nice and clean, and it heats itself. Then two weeks ago I was at a nearly-new sale with my family and Dad saw this and wondered if it might work....

Can you help me prove Chris Packham wrong ?

This is a very quick post, and it is another one where I need your help ! Can we prove Chris Packham wrong about something ?

Ric Morris is another bone collector who I met earlier this year and he sent me a tweet about a really interesting interview in the Radio Times between Chris Packham (for people outside the UK he's a famous wildlife presenter who I met last year) and David Attenborough (who is the world's best wildlife film maker). Ric sent me the tweet because I thought I'd be interested in them talking about polar bear skulls but there was something else that was even more interesting to me when I read it today:

Exploring the WWII bunkers on Sheriffmuir

This is a slightly different post and it's about things from World War II so I thought the best day to write about it was Remembrance Sunday. Remembrance Day happens on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and Remembrance Sunday is held on the second Sunday in November which are the same day this year. It is the anniversary of the end of World War I but on this day we remember the soldiers that have died in all wars.

On a moor called Sheriffmuir near my house there is a big secret from World War II that not many people know about, even the ones who live here. Hidden on the moors are bunkers and walls that were built in 1943, not to defend anything but to practice for one of the most important events of World War II, the D-Day landings when the Allied forces attacked France to force the Germans out of there. The Germans had built big fortifications along the beaches, and the Allies had to practice how to break through them.

Stalking red deer during the rut

Normally the four red deer forests that I explore just have herds of hinds (females). Unlike roe deer, red deer females group together for protection and to raise the calves. But at the end of September red deer stags start to come down into these woods from the moors to the north for the rut. The rut is when the stags round up the hinds to have lots of sex with them, and they will fight other stags to protect their groups of females which is called their harem. It's one of the weirdest ways to have babies but it seems to work for them.

BBC Autumnwatch has been on this week and they have been following the red deer rut on the isle of Rum (which is near Skye where I was last month). Scientists like the red deer there because the red deer are a closed population that can't go anyway, and so are good to study. Autumnwatch filmed some amazing scenes and my story is good but not quite as interesting as theirs.

Strange bones #12: the mystery metacarpal

This bone might not like a mystery at all if you know a bit about bones. But there are two big mysteries:  what animal is it from, and how did it get there ?

Dad found it two weeks ago when walking in Suicides Graves wood. It was in the south-west corner, maybe quarter a mile away from where I found the red deer calf bones, and it was well inside the wood itself, away from the fields. It is easy to see it is either a metatarsal or metacarpal (which is a lower leg bone) from an animal like a sheep or deer but that doesn't solve the mystery.

Other bone collectors and their favourite bones

This week's post is a bit different because it's the first one I have ever done that's not really written by me ! I got the idea when Ben Garrod did a competition for the most unusual skull on his Bens Bones Facebook page and it started me thinking about other bone collectors. I asked a few weeks ago for my readers of my blog to email me with their pictures and stories, and here are the first four who responded.

A big thank you to Sonja, Jack, Michael and Emma for doing this ! I'll definitely be doing more of these, so if you want to be featured in the future, email me at jakesbones@gmail.com.

Anyway here are the four stories...

I have written a totally new 'cleaning bones' section !

Back in 2009 I wrote a post about how to clean animal bones. It has been one of my most successful posts ever with lots and lots and lots of visitors, over fifty comments so far, and I get about three or four emails a week just asking for advice on cleaning bones. But it's three years old and I've learnt a lot more since then, so it's a bit outdated.

I'm on half term at the moment so I spent the day completely writing a new guide which has almost everything I know about cleaning bones. You can read it here or by clicking the "cleaning bones" tab at the top of every page. Hope you like it !

Woodpeckers, seals and other things I saw this week

For most of this week I've been on holiday in Skye, and I came back on Friday. This week has been great for seeing lots of wildlife. I have already written about seeing the white-tailed sea eagles but here are some of the other things I saw there and at home since I came back.

One of the most amazing things about Skye was how many stars you could see. On the second night Dad was leaving out the rubbish and then he called me out to see the sky. You could see so much because there were no clouds or streetlights and we were in the middle of nowhere. This is how it looked:

Seeing white-tailed sea eagles on the Isle of Skye

This week I've been on holiday in the Isle of Skye. Skye is an island to the north west of Scotland and it's about 55 miles tall and about 25 miles wide. Skye has amazing views, some great mountains and some incredible wildlife, including golden eagles, seals, otters and sea eagles (white-tailed eagles).

White-tailed sea eagles are the fourth biggest raptor in the world, and the rarest raptor in the UK. There are eleven breeding pairs in Skye. They are rare because they were once hunted almost to extinction (like red kites) and they have been reintroduced. They mainly hunt at the coasts but there is one which nests in Fife which my local gamekeeper has seen near my village, which is about 50 miles inland.

Did this red deer calf die last winter ?

This weekend I am at my uncle's wedding, so I am going to write about a walk that I did last weekend. Dad and I went up to Suicides Graves where we have been doing lots of stalking the red deer and hoping to spot stags that come into the woods for the rut. We saw four groups of red deer (and a red kite) but the most interesting thing was not alive at all.

We had worked all the way through the wood to a clearing at the south-west corner of the wood when I spotted some bones at the edge of the wood next to the clearing. They were the bones of a young  red deer hind (female) and they were scattered about as if foxes had pulled the body apart.

I need your help for two future blog posts !

I'm preparing two special blog posts for a month or so's time, and I need your help !

One is going to be about my ten favourite websites for bone collectors. I know what my ten favourite websites are, but are there any I have missed ? What are your favourite websites ?

I would like to do another post about other amateur bone collectors like me and what their favourite bone or skull in their collection is. I got the idea from a thing that Ben Garrod did on his Ben's Bones Facebook page (I came second with my leopard skull). If you are a bone collector, what's your favourite skull ?

Leave a message in the comments below, or email me at jakesbones@gmail.com !

PS. I have just realised this is my 200th blog post ! Hurrah for me !

The geese have started to arrive at Carsebreck !

Last Sunday me and dad went up on a walk on the moors near my house to explore an old abandoned quarry which used to produce millstones 150 years ago. We parked the car on a road nearby, and we we were walking up the hill when we spotted all these birds in the fields opposite. There seemed to be hundred of them all resting in the fields, most of them in one big group. This is really unusual but I worked out what was going on. This is a photograph of just one small part of the main group I saw:

My muntjac deer skull

There are six types of deer in the UK: roe deer, red deer, fallow, sika, Chinese water deer and muntjac. There are lots of deer around my village, but they are all red and roe deer, so it is hard for me to find a skull of the other types. I was lucky that I got my fallow buck skull from the gamekeeper in my village, but I didn't know how to get sika, Chinese water deer or muntjac.

Then in April I got a message through my Facebook fan page from Miss Bowen Hill who lives in Essex in England. She said her dog had found a muntjac skull and was I interested ? I said yes, definitely and she kindly sent it to me !

Stop the cull: sign the petition to save the badgers

This is a short post but it's about something I feel strongly about and I want you to support it too.

This week the Badger Trust lost a court case to stop the government killing badgers. The government want to shoot wild badgers to stop the spread of a disease called bovine tuberculosis, which means thousands of cows every year have to be killed.

I don't have a problem with animals being shot to protect the countryside, and it happens to foxes, rabbits and deer. But there is absolutely no scientific evidence that shooting badgers will protect cows from bovine TB, and it might even make things worse. Shooting badgers for no reason is just stupid.

It would happen only in England. In Wales they are planning to vaccinate (give a medical injection to) badgers. It won't affect anything in Scotland, where I live. That doesn't mean I shouldn't care about it.

There is a very good piece about it on the Huffington Post. You can read more about it at the RSPCA website, and also at the Just Do Something website, and also here and here.

You can show your support by signing this petition (over 15,500 signatures so far) or the one at 38 degrees (over 62,000 !), or email your MP and the Prime Minister about it at the RSPCA website. Do it now !

Researching Ardoch House at RCAHMS

Two weeks ago I wrote about Ardoch House, which was an old country house in my village which was built over 200 years ago but which vanished in the mid 1980s. A man called Mr Forbes from Canada had emailed me telling me about the house, how he explored it in the 1980s and how an old ancestor of his used to work there.

I did a lot of research online, and one of the websites I used was the Canmore database which is run by RCAHMS who are the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historial Monuments  of Scotland. They keep all the records of old buildings, some of which you can see online but some of which you have to  go to their offices in Edinburgh to see.  About a month ago, during the summer holidays, I went with dad to see the photos they had of Ardoch House.

The archeological bones, part 2: the teeth

Two weeks ago I started writing about a box of archeological bones I had been given as a present by someone who was moving to another country. This week I am going to write about the teeth in the box.   There were more teeth in the box than any other type of bone, perhaps because teeth last longer than bone. Some were still in fragments of jaw, and others were just loose by themselves.

You can tell a lot from teeth. They can tell you what type of things it ate, how big it was, how old it was, and sometimes what animal it was. I am really good with red and roe deer teeth because I have absolutely tons of them, but this was more of a puzzle because there were lots of different teeth some of which I had never seen before. It was also harder because when teeth are in a jaw it's easier to tell whether they are molars or pre-molars which are the two types of cheek teeth in animals.

Where did Ardoch House go ?

This is the story not about bones but about looking for an old historical building near my village.

It began with an email I got in April. It was from a man called David Forbes who lives in Canada but who used to have relatives in Braco which is the village where I live. He emailed me because he found my blog post about the ice houses on the Ardoch Estate. He told me that he used to have a relative who was a housemaid at Ardoch House over 100 years ago, and that when he came to Scotland in 1984 he visited the old Ardoch House which was now derelict. But he visited again in 1989 and it wasn't there any more !

This is the photograph he took in 1984:

The archeological bones, part 1: the puzzles

This is a story that is too big to say in one blog post so I'm going to spread it over three weeks. It all began when I got an email from a bone collector called Jen who lives in Dundee not far from me. She said that she was moving to Africa and she had some old archeological bones and asked if I wanted them because none of the universities did. I said yes, definitely, and about two weeks ago she came round to my house to drop them off before she moved and meet me and see my bone collection.

(This is one of two big sets of bones I was given this summer. The other came from Ric and I am still working through them but I am going to write about them too.)

I have never had archeological bones before and I asked some questions about the bones but probably not enough. She said some of the bones were 1,000 years old. She brought them in a big box and inside the big box there were sandwich bags of different groups of bones.

Ben's theory about the golden eagle

This week's post is different because it's about someone else's work, not mine. When I wrote about my golden eagle skull a few months ago, I wrote that it had two sets of injuries, one on the back of the head and one on underneath the skull. At the time I thought the first injury was caused by a blow, and the second one underneath was caused a different time by a shotgun pellet.

Ben Garrod, who is a zoologist and skeleton articulator wrote on my Facebook fan page that he had a different theory. This post is about his theory and how I tested it.

The mystery cross, a fox, a kestrel and a castle

This is a story about a walk a had a few weeks ago which I went to check out something strange near my house I'd seen on the satellite pictures on Google Maps. But it was such a great walk that I saw tons more so I'm going to write about all of it.

I use Google Maps a lot on the iPad to look at new places to walk and explore near my house. I wrote about it here. Google Maps is good for finding new woods and old buildings, but it doesn't have contour lines so you need a map as well. Here is what I found and wanted to explore.

My top ten tips for other child bloggers

This is an unusual post for me because it's about blogging, not about bones. It was because I was thinking about the Times article which was yesterday, and thinking about what I would say to another kid about starting a blog.

These are just my tips. The other bloggers in the Times article might do things differently, but these are the ten things that really help me write my blog:

I'm in The Times today (with a video) !

This weekend is a special weekend because I'm in The Times Weekend supplement today ! Today I'm going to write about what it was like to be photographed (together with a video of it !) and tomorrow morning I'm going to write about another post my advice to other kids that want to start blogging.

It all began when I got an email from the journalist Anna Moore who said she wanted to write a piece about child bloggers. She phoned about a week later and did an interview and asked me questions about when did I start and why did I start. Then the next week a photographer came to take the photographs. Here's a timelapse video of the whole photoshoot from start to finish:

The pony skull I bought for £1

I was hoping to write about the Times magazine feature on kid bloggers today, but it isn't in the magazine today so it must be in  next week. So instead I'm writing about this which is the pony skull I bought about a month ago on eBay.

I don't buy a lot of skulls on eBay but this one was special and a real bargain. Only one other person was bidding on it. I was prepared to pay £10 but I only had to pay £1.04 and about £5 postage.

Strange bones #11: The buzzard skull that wasn't

On Tuesday me and Dad went on a walk in Suicides Graves wood. First of all we went down to the south-east corner where there is sometimes a herd of red deer, but although we saw lots of tracks, we didn't see any deer. Then we worked west through the wood, following red deer tracks and paths, and looking for bones.

We found a lot of bones, including something that was either a lamb or a red deer calf, but nothing worth bringing back. That was until we were at the edge of a clearing when dad spotted this at his feet. We searched around but couldn't find any other bones near it.

Where can you find animal bones ?

This is one of the things that I have been meaning to do for ages. The question I am most often asked in emails is where do I find all my animal bones ? I don't really have any big secrets. I am lucky where I live because there are lots of animals, and I do lots of walks. Sometimes on the walks I find lots of bones and sometimes I find none. But here are ways to find bones for some of the animals in the UK.

My pipistrelle bat skeleton and my first licence

This is a story about my first bone licence. For collecting most bones you don't need a licence at all, and  if you find something you can usually keep it without asking as long as they weren't killed illegally. Some types are animals you do need a licence for because they are protected in some way.

The types of animals that you need licenses for are different from what you might think, and the law is complicated. I did a lot of research this year so I knew for sure that I didn't need a licence for my golden eagle skull, but I did have to check with Scottish Natural Heritage and DEFRA, and I have to keep information about where it came from and how it died. When I was talking to Scottish Natural Heritage about the golden eagle, they told me I did need a licence for another skeleton. It was one I wasn't expecting. It was my pipistrelle bat skeleton !

I've changed my blog address !

Did you notice I've changed my blog address ? From now on, my blog is at www.jakes-bones.com which is simpler than the old jakes-bones.blogspot.com address, although that one will still work too.

Everything should work with the new address now, but if you notice anything broken, let me know !

The amazing thing the stoat did

I was going to write about something else this week, until something really interesting happened on the walk today. It took less than four minutes but it was something I have never seen before. It was a miserable walk because it was raining a lot, and we had to change socks half way through. It had been raining so far that the stream we were going to cross was too wide, and we had to go around. On the drive back from the moor dad stopped the car to check a dead corvid by the side of the road. Then he looked in the rear view mirror and he saw what he thought were some baby rabbits and a stoat playing on the road !

The puzzle of the three-legged deer

This might look like a boring collection of bones to you, but it shows something quite strange. These are bones I have known about for a while. I first wrote about the red deer body in May 2010 (the picture is the big one under "the three dead red deer") and it wasn't until a year later that I noticed something strange about the bones and collected them. I called this collection "Yvette" because it was the 25th set of bones and I name them alphabetically.

My kangaroo skull

This is a skull I have had for a while but I haven't got round to writing about it until now. It was a special gift from one of dad's friend's Sarah who lives in the other Perth, the one in Australia. She sent me a package of something she had found by the side of the road, and she knew it was a kangaroo but not exactly what sort. She cleaned it up herself, and sent it through the post. It only took four days to go 15,000km !

Strange bones #10 - what is this ?

This is something that is a real mystery - can you help ?

I found this about three weeks ago at the Gleneagles wood (which I wrote about going deer stalking in). We found it under a tree at south east corner of the wood, just by a clearing. When I first saw it I thought it was just a piece of wood and not worth bringing home but dad thought it might be interesting. It's been at home for three weeks now and we still don't know what it is !

The roe deer with three antlers

This week's post is about something I bought on eBay rather than something I found myself. I prefer to find things myself but I saw this and I quite liked it and it's quite unique because you don't often see a roe deer with three antlers.

I really like bones (and antlers) that have grown strange because it makes me the only one in the world with something like that. Some of my favourite bones are a broken front leg, a broken femur, a broken tibia, a red deer with only one antler, a deer with three legs (that I haven't written about yet), and lots of others like the golden eagle with the skull injury and the shotgun pellet hole.

The red kite that was mobbed by a crow

This is a very quick post about something amazing that I saw out walking on Sunday. Dad and I were stalking roe deer in Quoiggs wood. We had already seen loads of them when I heard a bird sound like a high-pitched eek, more high pitched than a buzzard.  Then a red kite came down into a small clearing, tried to land on a tree, changing its mind then flew off. Then we saw it was being chased by a crow !

Watching seabirds in the Forth

Last weekend, Dad said I was going to have a surprise on Sunday morning. We got up early, and he told me to dress warm even though it was supposed to be warm anyway. We left the house at 7am, and I didn't know where I was going. He drove almost all the way to Edinburgh and parked right inbetween the Forth bridges. Then he told me that we were going on a seabird boat cruise that was part of the RSPB Scottish Birdfair !

The ancient horse jaw

Near the end of last year I went on a walk up to The Pheasant Woods which are on the other side of the river to the village. The Pheasant Woods are a collection of six or seven small woods and four lakes which used to be part of a big country estate. The country house was knocked down years ago but the ice houses and some other buildings are still there. It's a great place to find bones and watch roe deer and buzzards but I've explored it so much I don't often go there any more.

This time I went up in the afternoon and I was walking around and then I found this on the ground. It was very well camouflaged that I thought it was a big bit of tree bark. When I picked it up I realised it was a big jaw and I thought it was off a cow. I spent about two hours searching for the rest of the skull and skeleton but never found them.

Stalking deer in the Gleneagles Wood

I try and do one big walk a week with dad, usually at the weekend. There is always a kind of plan. Sometimes it is to watch deer, sometimes it is to explore new woods or deserted buildings, and sometimes to look for bones. Sometimes it is a bit of all three. This is about a walk I did two weeks ago where we went to watch roe deer.

The wood I chose was one I call the Gleneagles Wood because it is close to the Gleneagles Hotel. It is set on a heather moor, and is mostly dense pine trees with two big clearings. I have been here a lot. I first wrote about it here in January 2010, and the last time I wrote about it was last November. But this time was a bit special because I discovered something new !

Meeting a golden eagle for real

This weekend I have been away camping with cubs (my last cub camp because I'm moving up to Scouts !) so I'm going to write about something that happened just over a week ago. It was Take Your Child to Work day, and so I had been working with dad who is a photographer that morning, but in the afternoon he had arranged something special.

A few weeks before he had been at a big corporate event where there were falconers and lots of wild birds, including owls and a golden eagle ! He explained to the falconer that I had been sent a golden eagle skull, but I had never seen one for real, and the falconer at Elite Falconry said I could come up and see their two golden eagles !

My amazing golden eagle skull

Since last week I have been hinting about this skull, and now I can finally say what it is. It is a golden eagle skull !

If you haven't read the other two stories before this, I was sent an amazing biscuit tin of bones as a surprise by some I had never met before who worked as a deer stalker in the Highlands of Scotland. He told me he had collected these skulls over his life, and now he was retired and when he died his family were just going to throw them away. He read about me in the newspaper and sent the tin to my village without even a house or street name, but still the postman found the house.

You might think a ten year old boy shouldn't be allowed to have such a precious and rare skull as this, but I have spent six weeks, about 30 emails and phone calls, and contacting two government deartments to make sure I can keep it. From the very first moment I first got it, I told some expert friends, and they gave me very good advice. I checked the law (which is confusing), then got in touch with Scottish Natural Heritage who looked at all the information  I had, and how the bird died, then decided I was allowed to keep it. Then dad phoned DEFRA who said I didn't need any more licences or permissions from them. I have done loads and loads and loads of checking with experts, and I am definitely allowed to keep it. I wrote about all that did in a post yesterday. But here's more about this amazing skull.

The law and my amazing mystery skull

I promised that I was going to write this weekend about the extra skull that came in the biscuit tin of bones, and I am still going to but I'm going to write about it tomorrow. First of all I am going to write about what I had to do to work out whether I could keep it.

I'm not going to tell you yet what it is but as soon as I saw it I knew it could have only come from one of two animals and both of them are very rare and special indeed. I was very excited when I saw it, but I was worried that I wouldn't be allowed to keep it. I had to do lots of work to find out whether I could.

The surprise biscuit tin of bones

About a month ago I got a surprise card from the postman to say that he had tried to deliver a parcel to me. I had no idea who it came from, but it was an amazing surprise that showed how kind some people are. There are lots of reasons why this has taken me a month to write this, and one of them is very important and I will write about it more next week. But this week is exciting enough !

My pile of spare bones in the kitchen

Whenever I come back from a walk, the first room I come into is the kitchen, and this is where the small bones that I bring back end up. The pile grows and grows and grows until Mum goes off on one and I have to tidy them up. At the moment the pile is quite big, so as it's my school holidays at the moment, I went through them to see what I could find. Here is what is there at the moment: