life and death

While out walking the dog last night I was thinking about a series of pieces I want to do - something a bit different with wood boxes and found items. I've already collected a few things that are too large to glue to a canvas and I was getting a picture in my head of these pieces when I found a baby bird on the sidewalk, dead from an apparent fall from a nest.



This may seem a little odd, but I immediately thought, "This could be one of my found items!"

Then Reason spoke up, "Are you crazy? Dead rotting bird is not art!"

"Well, maybe I could figure something out..."

"Uh - no, I don't think so."

I started to pick up the dead bird with a convenient plastic bag I always keep on hand while walking the dog, then started to walk away, then turned back, said hello to the guy jogging by with his dog and made the decision. Yep, I'm going to see what I can do with the dead bird.



I put the little bird in the side yard in a clay saucer, with another one inverted over it, to keep big things from carrying it off & started to try to figure out what to do...



First step was internet research, seems there's actually things like "DIY taxidermy" which I read about & even looked carefully at how to photos, but it just didn't seem like something I could bring myself to do, especially when I saw the photos of the home-stuffed mouse. (It's one thing when a pro does it, but this was something else. Really.) Then I read about how to cut up a bird and store the pieces in cornmeal until the separate parts mummify, which still makes me think maybe that would work on the little bird without any cutting necessary. Finally I read about freeze drying, which would probably work best, but I think it's probably been out too long for that to work long-term.



So today I took photos, to at least preserve the memory, I'd already been meaning to photograph a couple bird's nests that I had found, to use in my mixed media pieces. I'll leave Baby Bird to the ways of nature and if I'm lucky I hope I'll have a skeleton for a box at some time in the future...