Cow skulls and skeleton parts

[Ugly Dougly]

Can someone put me in touch with a burn-friendly rancher that might have cow skeleton partsto contrribute to the Cause?

Thanks!

[Dr Dilemma]

Can someone put me in touch with a burn-friendly rancher that might have cow skeleton partsto contrribute to the Cause?

Thanks!

I'm intrigued and terrified all at the same time ... Now I want to see the finished display, or do I?

[ygmir]

I wonder about the rendering plants in the Bar Area, isn't that near you?

There's lots of bones scattered around the desert, but, widely dispersed.......

good luck.

[gyre]

We have a killing ground where the mall used to be.
I'm sure the police haven't found all the bodies yet.

[Simon of the Playa]

may i suggest a couple of chupacabra Pups?

breed them, and then take the whole family out at night for some Freshies.

[robotland]

Can someone put me in touch with a burn-friendly rancher that might have cow skeleton partsto contrribute to the Cause?

Thanks!

I tried that once...building a cow from the kit is MUCH harder than just buying one..... Getting the red parts to stick is REALLY tough.

[Toolmaker]

You can get skulls for about 40 bucks..

http://www.cowboyway.com/CowSkulls.htm

also try ebay

[Ugly Dougly]

There was an archway made several years ago, from bony cow parts, found littering area adjacent to the playa. I think it was 1997.

I figured its a renewable resource. If anyone has a line on some of these, drop me a PM. Thanks!



Oh, yes, be afraid, be very afraid.

[wedeliver]

what ja want bro. Cow, pig, deer, alien, cat, dog, human??

We have a large cattle ranch near by. He runs a couple thousand head. Depending on how many tons of bones you want, how complete you want the pieces to be, skull attached to spine, etc. I also talked to my son in law and he has a "bone yard" also.

[theCryptofishist]

One of each, please.

[Ugly Dougly]

Is that up by the OR - CA border?

[ygmir]

do you have any friends in Cambodia?............


there's also a cool church in Czech republic, I forget the name.........all decorated with bones........

[Bob]

The 1997 arch was horse & cow bones. Mostly horse, I think.

Coincidentally, the BLM is currently doing a "roundup".

http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/info/newsro ... r_460.html

[wedeliver]

Is that up by the OR - CA border?

Yes, Eastern California. I thought you replied to our offer for camping on the way to and from the burn. You can see my website by clicking on the webcam link below, then remove the webcam part. We are 57 miles south of Klamath Falls, Oregon. 26 miles south of Tulelake, California

[Ugly Dougly]

I'd like to see if there are any closer bones. It's still January. Thanks!

[mercury_988]

OMG that church in the czech republic is beautiful! its all the skeletons of monks that they could not fit into the crypt. They even have chandeliers made of bones. its so eerie. This project sounds cool already

[trystanthegypsy]

ebay!

or your local slaughterhouse?

[mdmf007]

ebay!

or your local slaughterhouse?

Local slaughterhouse will give you heads that have been busted in half to get the brain.

If you do get a head intact it will be covered in hide, and meat. Drop it in an ants nest for a couple of months they will pick it clean, if you can keep the local dogs from taking it. Wrap it in a short stretch of chain link fence or other similar to stop the scavengers.

We used to drop squirrels or other rodents wrapped in wire mesh into ants nests - they do an AMAZING job of getting everything but fur off. But the fur is just sitting there as the skin was eaten away as well. A squirrel only takes 4-5 days.

[Oldguy]

My mom used to cut and wrap in a frozen food locker/ butcher shop. Hides and tallow were put in barrels for the reandering plant. Some bones were cut with a bandsaw for soupbones, most were not.

Check your local butcher or locker who process game or farmer's beeves. Old Mr McElroy used to skin and dress out bear, deer, antelope, and small game. He was old school, he used to split beef down the spine with an axe. After he cut them down to quarters, my mom would custom cut steaks, chops, stew meat, whatever to order. It's a rare art these days with factory meat processing...A skinned bear carcase hung up on hooks looks remarkably human.

You might checkout horse stables or regional zoos. Elephant bones would be impressive. Some universities have bovine and equine hospitals. Check with vets who treat large animals.

[ygmir]

I bet you can get bones mail order from Cambodia........

[Ugly Dougly]

I was figuring there was a ranch in Nevada that would have them laying about. That side-trip to Klamath Falls is sounding more interesting.

[Bob]

As I recall, Michael Christian picked over most of what was readily available close to the event site in 1997. Some was cow bones scattered around Fly Ranch. Most were wild horse skeletons from locations where in the somewhat recent past they'd been rounded up, driven down steep ravines & shot. Grisly business, literally, and I believe the location(s) were pretty remote wrt to navigable roads. But he needed a couple tons of bones for his arch, and was very determined to get them -- you haven't said how much you're looking for, and for what.

[Sail Man]

Try these:

http://www.skullduggery.com/
http://theevolutionstore.com/ Notice the name, how appropriate
http://www.skullsunlimited.com/
http://www.boneroom.com/bone/bone1.html

[Ugly Dougly]

As I recall, Michael Christian picked over most of what was readily available close to the event site in 1997. Some was cow bones scattered around Fly Ranch. Most were wild horse skeletons from locations where in the somewhat recent past they'd been rounded up, driven down steep ravines & shot. Grisly business, literally, and I believe the location(s) were pretty remote wrt to navigable roads. But he needed a couple tons of bones for his arch, and was very determined to get them -- you haven't said how much you're looking for, and for what.

It's February. I don't know about you, but I'm a long way from getting packed.

Now is a time for trying out ideas and discovering sources. I don't know how many bones I'll need until I find out how many are available and how much they will cost me.

I envision these mostly as camp mascots and atmosphere. If they were easy to come by, I am sure they'd be at everyone's camp.

I've been to the Bone Room (why does that sound so bad?), thanks Sailman, very cool selection. Such things are probably a lot cheaper when you get closer to the source. Is there a good slaughterhouse in the Bay Area? I'm not as squeamish as some.

[Ugly Dougly]

I like how bovine hip bones look:

[Oldguy]

From" Environmental Grafiti " website on wierd news:

Remember that weird teacher you had in high school? No matter what, I promise you they weren’t as strange as Ray Bandar, a retired high school science teacher in California who has taken up collecting skulls as a hobby and currently has over 7,000 of them.

Mr. Bandar, who affectionately goes by “Bones,â€

[Oldguy]

More about Ray Bandar from the SanFrancisco Chronicle:

The Bone Collector
Ray Bandar, who has collected the skulls and bones of more than 7,000 animals and decapitated many, inspired one of the films by Bay Area filmmakers at the Ocean Film Festival
Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, January 20, 2007

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There is no house like it anywhere. Every room of Ray Bandar's San Francisco abode is crammed with animal body parts, especially the skulls of dead creatures decapitated by him. Even the bathroom, which features a camel pelvis and caribou antlers, has been overtaken.

"The wife's not happy," he said. "She can't take a bath anymore."

But Alkmene Bandar is used to it. Her 79-year-old husband, a longtime research associate with the California Academy of Sciences, has been collecting skulls for more than half a century.

He still roams the beaches of Northern California searching for the carcasses of marine mammals, which is how he ended up being the subject of a movie in this weekend's San Francisco Ocean Film Festival.

"He's the old world," said Beth Cataldo, whose 30-minute film, "Ray Bandar: A Life with Skulls," will be shown at the festival on Sunday. "He's very unique."

Cataldo became familiar with Bandar's handiwork months before she met him. As a volunteer with Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center, she was spending a lot of time on Ocean Beach -- and stumbling upon the headless carcasses of seals and sea lions. When she went to the "Skulls" exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in December 2003, she found the clues she needed: Most of the pieces came from Bandar.

That month, she started shooting the movie -- one of five offerings from Bay Area filmmakers that are among 31 films in the festival, which drew a record 137 entries this year.

"Until I met Ray, I always thought science was dry and lacking in humor," Cataldo said. "He can't live forever. Those stories will go away."

A native San Franciscan who grew up in the Richmond District, Bandar began acquiring specimens in junior high. "Reptile Ray," as he was known, now has more than 7,000 skulls, including at least 2,600 from California marine mammals.

When the Academy of Sciences moved downtown temporarily in 2004 -- it's being rebuilt in Golden Gate Park -- Bandar lost his lab and also had to reclaim the 1,500 skulls that had been in the exhibit, although hundreds of others remain in the museum's permanent collection.

"You have to be careful not to get impaled on something," Alkmene Bandar says in the film, describing the dangers of walking around the house.

Those who enter are greeted by a living room straight out of a "Far Side" cartoon. They encounter horns, antlers, skulls, rocks, driftwood, and tall sculptures from New Guinea and Africa. Pennie, an Asian elephant who lived for many years at the San Francisco Zoo, can also be found there -- or at least her femur and pelvis.

"She had osteoarthritis," Bandar said. "I didn't get her skull, unfortunately."

His own discoveries -- sanctioned by state and federal permits -- are supplemented by what he's gotten from local zoos, museums, taxidermists, roadkill, and trips to Australia, Africa and Mexico. Many of the objects appeared in his classroom during his 32 years at Fremont High in Oakland, teaching biology, human anatomy and physiology.

In his house, much of the animal world is represented, and everything is meticulously recorded and arranged. Bandar doesn't own anything as common as a cell phone, television or computer, but anyone who wants to see Malayan sun bears, Tibetan antelopes or four species of wallaby has come to the right place.

"I'm a collector," said Bandar, in colossal understatement.

No room has escaped. The dining room includes a mummified monkey that won an Academy of Sciences' "grossest dead thing" award, while display cases from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition hold snake skeletons. Moose antlers take up most of the bathtub. Even the washer and dryer in the basement are surrounded -- which makes doing the laundry a challenge -- and the freezer contains dolphin and porpoise skulls.

"I've got hundreds of pelvises, too. I'm into pelvises and vertebrae. I look at bones as pieces of sculpture," said Bandar, who met his artist wife of 53 years when they were in art school.

Cartoonist Gary Larson, creator of "The Far Side," once dropped by.

"He didn't say a word," Bandar recalled.

By the time visitors reach the "bone palace" on the bottom level, they've progressed from disbelief to speechlessness. Thousands of skulls grin, leer, grimace or scowl -- looking down from the ceiling, packed wall to wall. One can find giraffe legs, boxes of marine mammal penis bones and the foot of an orangutan.

"That's Old Baldy from the Sacramento Zoo," Bandar said. "I was lucky to get him."

The skull of a male hippopotamus from the San Francisco Zoo also resides there. "There's Puddles No. 1," added Bandar with a schoolboy's glee.

When people see him on the beach sawing through sea lion hides, they sometimes think he's homeless or deranged. The accompanying odors don't help.

"Most of the stuff I do is smelly stuff," said Bandar, who relies on bacterial macerations, maggots and beetles to help him strip the flesh from the skulls.

In Cataldo's film, Alkmene Bandar says, "I have a very weak sense of smell. It's how the marriage has survived."

Sid Hollister, who has helped put the ocean festival together since it started four years ago, said that Cataldo found a good medium for Bandar.

"There's something about humanity that can't get transferred to computers," Hollister said.

That's partly why San Francisco filmmaker Elizabeth Pepin made "One Winter Story," which is about the life of Sarah Gerhardt, the first woman to surf the infamous waves of Maverick's in San Mateo County.

Pepin and Sally Lundburg shot from jet skis and the sides of cliffs. It took five years, $30,000 in cash and lots of donations, including music and sound effects.

"We even had a bake sale on the beach to raise money," Pepin recalled. "Making the movie was freeing and scary at the same time. We got to make all the decisions."

Bandar didn't have a chance to see the film about him until Friday afternoon. He'd been too busy dealing with the remains of deceased animals. Will it ever end?

"That's what Alkmene wonders," he said. "I'll stop when I can't walk anymore or climb up and down the cliffs."


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BANDAR'S 7,000 SKULLS
Among his skull collection:

1,700 California sea lions

1,000 birds

120 black bears

24 Breeds of dog, from Chihuahuas to Great Danes

12 leopards

9 giraffes

6 rhinos

6 hippopotamuses


PELVISES AND RARITIES
1 Set of jaws from a 10-foot, 600-pound great white shark

200 Animal pelvises, including a 110-pound elephant pelvis and a female eland pelvis that Bandar uses as a mask

Particularly rare:

1 Skull of a tuatara (a reptile)

1 Double penis bone from a California sea lion

Note: Numbers approximate

Source: Ray Bandar

[Ugly Dougly]

Can I decapitate at my theme camp?

[Oldguy]

Yes, it's been done! I saw some folks skinning out some furbearing animal last year in the back of a pickup truck parked on a playa street. It was fairly large, I didn't see it closeup. It may have been a badger, or large raccoon, or even a muskrat, or somebodies dog.

[Isotopia]

As I recall, Michael Christian picked over most of what was readily available close to the event site in 1997.

Waaay back when we were working on the Bone Tree it became obvious that there were not quite enough bones to complete it. I believe Flash made the trek to a place outside of Reno on 395 (north) where there's tons of bones to be had. Sorry I can't remember the name of the place though.

Depending on what kind of bones, how many, etc. you might try getting in touch with any of a number of butchers. I know that's how we found a whole pigs head that we used one year for an ACT UP/San Francisco action when we were protesting the high price of AIDS drugs. But I digress.