EISPIRATEN

My morbid collection of road kill and other sad animal demises ...


I found this little Gray Fox just last weekend on Mt. Baldy Rd. He was in such good condition I took him home
to have him taxidermied, but then I found out the cost. Yikes! So I gave him to the Eaton Canyon Nature Center,
where I sometimes do docent work.


I found this Ringtail on Hwy 39 on the way to the East Fork. It was a fresh kill, but the skull was too damaged
to have him taxidermied.


People call these Blue Jays, but there are actually no Blue Jays in California. This is a Steller's Jay. I offered
him to Eaton Canyon, but they can't take birds because of the Newcastle Virus, which it may have died from.


This poor little Mule Deer got whacked on Lower Tujunga Rd. You can tell he was less than a year old from
the spots on his side.


This badly desiccated Coyote (or maybe a chupacabra) was found near Inspiration Point, outside of Wrightwood.
He was missing a leg, which leads me to believe he may have been caught in a trap and chewed it off.


Found near the Bridge To Nowhere, this LOOKED like a dead Tarantula. But on closer inspection this turned
out to be a shed exoskeleton. They shed their entire outer shells just like snakes do with skin. So somewhere
out there this spider still lives on.


This Bighorn skull was found about 200 yards from the Horseshoe Annex Mine. The rest of the skeleton is
still inside the mine, killed by a mountain lion. I took the skull home, bleached it, and now it's on my wall.


This King Snake was found on a road in Agua Dulce, near Sterling Mine. A car had injured him, and he was
pretty much doomed if he stayed on that hot pavement. I moved him off to the side, but he probably didn't survive.

This is my kind of post! What's your success rate with roadkill? I'm discovering that more often than not, cars have run over the carcass, shattering the bones. And I usually can't tell until after some fairly-smely work. Oh, how different do empty tarantula exoskeletons look from living tarantulas? I've seen these a few times, but assumed they were the full animal. Would have taken it home if it was just a shell.

I don't even bother with the splatter kills. If they get whacked in the head and not actually run over the carcass is salvagable, if it's fresh. I used to have a pet tarantula and one morning I woke up with two full sized ones in the cage. What the hell? That's how I found out about them shedding. The shed looks identical to the spider.

I was road walking from Buckhorn Campground back to Cloudburst Summit and almost walked into a dead deer near Krakta Ridge. It looked like most of it's vitals were gone. I shoulda taken a photo; sorry.

Sounds like a just-the-right-amount-of-dead specimen. You should have taken it home

Here's a shot of the rest of the bighorn's skeleton. I always get nervous when I enter this mine.

Neat pics. The worst one I ever encountered was a dead deer alongside Angeles Forest Highway, probably roadkill. It was rotting and the stench was horrible.

Sean wrote: ↑Neat pics. The worst one I ever encountered was a dead deer alongside Angeles Forest Highway, probably roadkill. It was rotting and the stench was horrible.

That's my problem; I have no sense of smell, so I get no warning.

This is bringing back flashbacks of finding that suicide last year. I'm done with finding dead things.

A few new additions to my morbid collection.
The first are skulls from prairie dogs.
The second is a dead antelope. I broke the skull of the rest of the skeleton and took it home to bleach.

If the photos don't upload here's a link.
https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipO ... sV_s0WADIp

Your tapatalk photos posted just fine. But your google photos require a google account. How much are they paying you???

Oh, and thanks for the photos. How do you know the smaller ones were prairie dogs? Do they have some identifying features? Rodents all look kinda similar.

That stuff was found on the prairie, east side of Colorado Springs. There aren't any rodents with skulls that big out here other than prairie dogs. One skull had a damaged eye socket, so they were probably killed by hawks or falcons.. There are badgers out here too. That would be a dream find. Google Photos is free, unless you have a massive amount of photos, and then they start charging you.

Neat! You definitely need a google account to give them images, but I thought you could tell them to not require one for people viewing the images? There's no button you can push?

Not sure.

So morbid but cool!

Creepy Joe approves

I don't know what that means. But can we please keep this apolitical? Thanks.

Is there anything in this world that doesn't offend you Dima?

Hawk.

Copter Ridge (Aug 2009)

My dreams

Thanks for the Faces of Death post.

BTW, how much is it to taxidermy a carcass?

Taxidermy is pricey. Depends on how big the animal is. If you find something that is in good shape they recommend you freeze it as soon as possible. There are also good and bad taxidermists, so make sure you view a few photos of what they've done before. For fish they charge by the inch, about $11 to $22 per inch. Something large like a bear can go for anywhere from $3,000 and $4,800. A raccoon or a fox might go for $400 to $600

Thanks! I've always wondered how much it cost.

Found on the Wilson toll road.

Why shop when you can run one over.

Squirrel at Henninger Flat area.

What's that hole in the ground above him?

CrazyHermit wrote: ↑What's that hole in the ground above him?

It's the water drainage.