How I nearly got a pig skull

How I nearly got a pig skull

Technically, I did have a pig skull, for a single night… I went with my family to a country fair, and at lunch, whilst enjoying a nice pork sandwich from a hog roast stall, I befriended the young guy working there and he gave me the head from the pig roast in a sealed black bag, having cut off most of the meat and telling me that boiling it would remove the remaining scraps.  Apparently, they give it away at most events as a lot of collectors and art students ask.

I took it home, stuck it in mums biggest pan and let it soak, and I was impressed at how well it worked, as I had heard that boiling can soften bone and cause it to rot. Then I left it outside to dry out overnight which was the last time I saw it…

When I got up the next morning, I went downstairs to find that the skull was gone, except for a jaw fragment and the thick bony chunk from the base of the skull where the spinal cord joins. My dog, smelling the skull, which still smelled like bacon from the hours it had spent on a hog roast, had eaten the  huge foot long skull!  She had gnawed on it for hours, wearing it away until it was nearly all gone. All I have left from what would have been one of my largest skulls, along with my horse and red deer stag skulls, is half a dozen molars (the chewing and grinding teeth)  and seven incisors (the cutting teeth in herbivores and carnivores).

 Those large molars are huge, bigger than a two pound coin,  which is probably why my dog couldn’t break them with her jaws. While most of the incisors are small, one is long and thin (bottom left), and was only showing by about a centimetre or so, with the other two inches hidden away in the jawbone.

So, despite all my hard work, I still don’t have a pig skull, but maybe this summer ill ask at a few events and see if I can get another one.

Next time, ill be showing my cigar box of delights, a wooden case filled with odd, small and fragile or rare pieces from my collection, so expect the unexpected and bizarre .