I now have 100 skulls in my room!

December 25, 2011 11:32 AM

My name is Jake and I am a bone collector. This is his room, where he keeps his more than 100 skulls (a contender for the years most awesome cataloguing and archiving effort [look at that organization!]). How Jake cleans up animal bones

I love walking, exploring, watching wildlife and collecting bones. So far I have thousands of bones in my collection, almost all of which I have found myself, within a few miles of my village. I have 100 skulls on display in my bedroom and I'm even a little bit famous.

How I began bone collecting

I've been collecting bones since I was six, and I started this website in July 2009 when I was seven. (You can read more about why I began blogging here.) Every week I write something new here. Mostly it's about bones that I've found, but sometimes it's about animals and birds that I see on my walks.
The first bones I collected were rabbit bones, from a hill in Perthshire overlooking my after-school club.

I got so good at collecting rabbit bones, that me and my dad went exploring further, and we found lots of bones from different animals.

The animal bones I have found include roe deer, red deer, sheep, foxes, buzzards, swans,ducks, geese and even cats !

Other people have been very kind and have sent me other animal skulls like pig, seal, puffins, badgers seabirds and even monkeys and a leopard !

The skull I would most like would be a giraffe or a lion skull. But there don't seem to many of those around where I live. (or maybe there are...)
Or a human skull! That would be cool. Daddy says I might get one of those, if Grandma's cough doesn't clear up soon.

posted by infinite intimation (12 comments total)

These are some of the best posts by Jake.
Today I was filmed for BBC Autumnwatch !
Remember I'm on Autumnwatch tonight ! (Updated)
 
Vulpy, the fox skeleton

How to tell red and roe deer apart

How I cleaned up my fallow deer skull

My new badger skull

How roe deer antlers grow

Strange bones #4 - the broken deer leg

Putting a partial roe deer skeleton back together

Putting a fox skeleton back together


posted by infinite intimation at 11:32 AM on December 25, 2011

I loved finding skulls out in the woods when I was a kid, never found all that many, though. I still have a couple of raccoon skulls from way back then. Always hoped to find something exciting, like a wolf or a cougar...a bit unlikely in the suburbs.
posted by maxwelton at 11:54 AM on December 25, 2011

Dang, man, this is a heck of a hobby. Great post!
posted by dismas at 12:10 PM on December 25, 2011

That is a pretty impressive collection.
posted by gomichild at 12:43 PM on December 25, 2011

So cool. I appreciate skulls as a (perhaps cliche) reminder of my hidden corporeal nature and its temporal brevity. I have a personal goal to acquire all known hominid skulls of human lineage to display in my office.
posted by troll at 1:03 PM on December 25, 2011

I even have a special birthday skull which I am going to write about today.

Ah to be 10 years old, have a blog and a special birthday skull...
posted by chavenet at 1:19 PM on December 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

The house my kids grew up in had accumulated a couple dozen skulls over the years... gotta wonder what the trash folks thought when we moved out...

Fun stuff.
posted by tomswift at 1:31 PM on December 25, 2011

This kid is awesome, and I have spent a lot of my Christmas afternoon reading all of his blog posts. Thanks for posting this!
posted by naturalog at 1:32 PM on December 25, 2011

Hmmm. I only have about ten skulls right now (with some additional ones in storage in the states). I do have a pelican skull, though, so maybe I can arrange a trade.
posted by snofoam at 3:19 PM on December 25, 2011

I am a mug collector.

<sub>I am officially up to four. Three are Christmas mugs. Two are santa heads from the 70's.

But I really, really like mugs.

Also, you can't drink out of skulls.

...Well, I guess you can, so nevermind.</sub>
posted by Malice at 10:32 PM on December 25, 2011

I really like his posts about his trips to museums. Amazing pictures.
posted by infinite intimation at 11:41 AM on December 26, 2011

I hope the hobby doesn't escalate into something awful. Every animal skull collector I've encountered has a hankering for a human one at some point or another. And those faux plaster ones just won't do...
posted by Renoroc at 12:20 PM on December 26, 2011