Splitting Skulls

So, what did you do this weekend?

How many times have you ever said...we went to a skull splitting party? Well, when you're related to the Dlouhy family, you have at least said it once.

Grandma has been taking care of Grandpa's skull collection and she felt it was better if each family member came and took what they wanted from the collection to have in their own home. Then the rest of the pieces would be taken to a nature center.

Here's some of what Grandpa wrote about his skull collection in his journal:

"I have about fifty or so. I have never purposely killed an animal to get them. Some of them I found nice and clean. Some needed cleaning and patching and gluing. Some are in perfect shape, most are in good shape, some are not. A few I bought. Many I brought home dead animals I found and even road kill. This collection represents many hours and days and miles of hiking, canoeing, and camping. How many skulls have you found?? At first I would bury the animal or head and dig it up a month or more later. Sometimes it come up clean, but sometimes the skull would fall apart too bad to repair and I lost a lot of skulls. Now what I do is boil the head to cook it (about an hour) which also kills the germs. Then clean it as well as I can and then soak it in cleaning detergent and then clean it again (knives, scrapes, brushes, etc.). Then spray it with disinfectant and leave out in the sun for a few days."

So one Saturday night, Grandma invited us all over to choose our favorites from Grandpa's collection. It was such a fun night talking about the skulls that have been found for Grandpa and how he loved his collection. I remember Jason coming home one day saying that he had the perfect Christmas gift for Grandpa. I was shocked since it was always so hard to buy for him. Then he pulls out a dead bird or something that he found on a roof while he was working. Wouldn't you know...that was a perfect gift for someone like Grandpa.

Jason had his eye on this goat skull from the beginning. He's thinking of making Skeletor's staff using this skull (instead of a Ram's skull). We'll see if he actually does it. 

Helping Clark make a good choice...

The choice Clark actually made... :) He loves his horns.

Wendy's the proud owner of this bird. She's planning on putting it a shadowbox and displaying it in her home.

Kent picked a little turtle shell.

Isaiah even got to choose. The minute he picked out the cow skull we thought for sure that Danielle and Alvin were going to give us a hard time. We haven't heard anything from them though, so it must have been okay. Believe it or not...this isn't the largest skull that was on the table. There was also a horse's skull. Eek!

Browsing the goods...

All sales final...haha!