Earlier this summer, I found a dead coyote nearby. It was up by the borough road, so it likely died from being hit by a car. We inspected the body to make sure it was not someone’s dog or a pet that was abandoned (that is something we see sometimes “where the road ends”; folks will drive to the end of the road and abandon their pets). Over the next fortnight, Huginn and Muninn, my two pseudo-pet ravens, fed on the body. Then one day one of the ravens dropped something at the edge of my field. It was the coyote skull, close to intact and almost completely clean. Only some dried skin and gums remained.
For those familiar with canid anatomy, it will be easy to see even in that blurry picture that the skull isn’t quite right for a coyote; there is a slight angle to the skull, like a wolf’s skull, where a coyote’s skull should be completely flat. The angle isn’t nearly as sharp as it would be on a domestic dog though. Was this a coy-dog? Or a coy-wolf? I’m not rightly sure.
I would like to believe that Huginn and Muninn dropped me a little present in return for all the lovely food scraps they get every winter. I can’t be sure about that either, but I want to believe.
In any case, I was presented with an opportunity and was not going to waste it. Off to Moore’s Hardware for some supplies to finish cleaning the skull. I live for this shit!
When the skull was cleaned, I prepped it with a primer, since bone is porous.
I then used MIRROR by Culture Hustle, which is a totally insane and totally awesome chrome paint, and Black 3.0 also from Culture Hustle, which is basically a void in a bottle.
The final result:
