Phase 3

June 19, 1997

I have completed the pattern on both sides of the skull. As evidenced from the picture the pattern will be different on each side. The two sides will be tied together by a common thread, evident on the bridge of the nose and the back of the skull. Ususally, when laying out the design of a carving, it is necessary to sketch a small area and then lay in an initial carved line - because the pencil marks blur given all the handling. In order to lay in the full design this time, I sprayed the pencil lines with an acrylic spray. The spray protects the lines from handling, but allows the lines to be erased if I decide to change their position.

This past week, I was given a black bear skull by Mike Von Hearten. Typically, when bears are hunted, the skull is kept for conservation purposes. Age, sex, etc. are determined from skull and other body parts, then the meat and hide are used and the skull is disposed. I asked Mike for the skull - for the purposes of carving. He agreed, cautioning me that it had been sitting out for a week or so. The muscle and other tissues had begun to decompose. It was a little pongy, to be sure.

The normal proceedure to clean a skull is to boil it in water - effectively cooking the meat off of the bone. Something quite unusual happened when I did this. The faint but unmistakable smell of rotting meat wafted through the house. I put in a little bleach to kill the smell, which was only moderately effective. After opening the screened windows, we all went out for a while. When we returned, I noticed that the kitchen had filled with flys. There were probably a hundred or more on the stove counter and window. Where had these pesky little critters come from and why?

Allow me to digress for a moment. A few years ago, my son received a plastic bug house - the clear, bottle-like kind with an aerated lid. It came with all kinds of nifty suggestions for trapping bugs of various descriptions.

He wanted to trap a fly. So we did.

Next came the question of food. Meat we thought. So we put in a square inch chunk of meat.

As we watched in fascination the fly laid several white eggs on the meat. Or so we thought. Because before our eyes the white "eggs" dissappeared into the meat. Over the next few days we saw the little white eggs, which turned out to be maggots, grow and grow and grow. The eggs weren't eggs at all, but live baby flys right from the start. Did you know that flys give live birth to their offspring? How many other insects do that? Perhaps that accounts for the fly's major success in the insect world?

We also discovered something else. The smell. Meat doesn't rot when left on its own. It just drys out. That horrible smell comes from the maggots. Judging by what happened to the meat (it seemed to melt or liquify) my guess was the smell came from an acidic kind of solution given off by the maggots to dissolve the meat so that they could eat it.

The smell took about two years outdoors to leave the bug house, which was never really used again. Powerful stuff indeed!

I think my kitchen experience with the bear head demonstrated the purpose for the smell itself. The smell must alert every fly in the neighbourhood to the presence of suitable food for their young. The uncanny thing about the presence of so many flys in the kitchen was that all the windows had screens, and yet they still managed to get in. The smell must be a very powerful motivator for the fly. When I took off the lid to examine the skull, I found that it had indeed played host to a number of "fly larvae" and that they were the source of the smell. The boiling had served to broadcast the smell through the screened windows, inviting the flys to glories of what might have been.

Truly nature is incredible - a little less so sometimes at mealtime. I think I may need to pick up a new pot for the kitchen too. :)

One possible outdoor commercial application, for anyone wanting to build a better fly trap, might be to exploit this smell.

Perhaps if the maggot scent used were faint enough, humans might not notice ... otherwise, I fear it would be an idea with a very short life indeed.

Have a great week,

Shane