Zombie badgers and old buried bones

You can probably remember that a few months ago I found a roadkill badger outside my village, and I wrapped it in a wire mesh and left it in a wood near my house which I call The Mortuary wood (the buzzard is there too at the moment as well).

I've been meaning for ages to go back and collect the bones, but I only got round to it at the weekend. But when I went back to check on it I got a surprise !

This is how I wrapped it in wire mesh, which helps keep the bones together on the 16th April, the day after I found it:

The edges were tied up with cable ties to keep predators away:

Then it was hidden in a hole underneath the roots of a fallen down pine tree, and covered up with sticks. Dad checked on it a few times to make sure it hadn't been disturbed. When we went back on Sunday, this is how it looked when I pulled it out. It looked almost exactly the same as when we left it 111 days ago !

I wasn't expecting that ! I have seen a red deer reduced to just white bones in just three months, and a badger is much smaller.

Looking through the mesh the gumline was still there in the jaws, and the teeth were still being held in place:

Very gross image. Click and hold down to see the full picture or click here to see in a new window.

And the paws looked very similar to when it first died:

So what went wrong ?

I thought I had done everything right. The wire mesh would let insects in and body fluids out. It was left next to a pond which would attract insects. It was left in the countryside where the smell wouldn't be noticed. It was covered by sticks but air could still get to it.

I asked on Twitter about what I did wrong, and @HeebieB and @CuratorLaura gave some tips.

@jakesbones warm, wet conditions, anything good for bacteria will speed it up. If it's hot and very dry it may have mummified?
— Heather Bonney (@HeebieB) August 4, 2013

@jakesbones temp, moisture, presence of bacteria & necrophagous (corpse-eating) invertebrates, exposure. You could try defleshing first?
— Laura McCoy (@CuratorLaura) August 5, 2013

Although I think they both missed the obvious answer:

@CuratorLaura @HeebieB I think your both missing the obvious cause. ZOMBIE BADGERS !
— Jake (@jakesbones) August 5, 2013

In Scotland we have had a couple of warm weeks, but it has been raining again for the last week or so. But rain wouldn't fall on the badger because it's hidden in a small cave at the edge of the tree roots. My second reason was worrying whether the mesh holes were big enough for flies to get in. Flies lay eggs which turn into maggots which eat flesh.  There were a few maggots I could see on the body but not many, so I cut a hole in the top of the mesh:

I'm going to go back to add water from time to time, or make a hole in the turf above so rain can get in.

There was another interesting thing too. On the way there, walking through the wood, there was an upturned pine tree. (I always check tree roots after I found the WWII bomb last year.) I saw the edge of a bone sticking out of the upturned soil.

This was it:

It was 22cm long, and the outside layer of bone was flaking off:

The bone was similar to deer or sheep lower leg bones, but much bigger. It was either a metatarsal (the bone(s) between ankle and toe)  or metacarpal (between the wrist and finger). In animals like deer and sheep the bone looks like two bones fused closely together. The way to tell the difference between a metatarsal and metacarpal on these animals is the shape of the bone at the ankle end. If it is round, it's a metatarsal (back leg) and if the shape is squashed like an oval or "D", then it's a metacarpal (front leg). I wrote more about the difference in this post last year. This bone is a metatarsal:

The other end shows me that it was a young animal because the ends of the bones at the toe ends hadn't yet fused on.

From the size of the bone, it must have been from a young cow, but not a baby one.

It was disappointing about the badger, but at least I found this bone !

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