'I'm always looking for the Hows and the Whys and the Whats,' said Muskrat, 'That is why I speak as I do. You've heard of Muskrat's Much-in-Little, of course?'
'No,' said the child. 'What is it?'
- The Mouse and his Child. Russell Hoban.

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Monday 27 August 2012

I Saw Something Nasty in the Linen Cupboard

"Oooh yuk" was my first thought when I saw this object in the top of my hot-water cupboard.  

But it is so tiny, so clean and so beautifully precise...!  
So light I couldn't even feel it on my fingers.


A pale, translucent, delicate cranium...


Those delicate slivers of bone supporting and protecting the enormous eye sockets ....


Minute, perfectly-formed molars.... dinky incisors.


I have come to view it as a most remarkable and wondrous thing.



19 comments:

  1. Good heavens, then where is the rest of it? I suppose it was a mouse?

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    1. Well yes, Helsie. Good question... :-)

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    2. I thought of it quietly melting in your laundry too - but it is a beautiful skull!

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    3. The good news was that it wasn't involved with the linen at all. It was on the very top (unused) shelf.

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  2. A wonderful find. Better than finding diamonds.

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    1. Yes Adrian! Precisely!

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    2. Although I rather like diamonds too. Just in case anyone was poised to give me some and is now thinking of changing their mind.

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  3. I don't think it was a mouse - I think it was a little bird? When you find out please let your adoring public know.

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    Replies
    1. I think I can safely say that birds don't have teeth.

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    2. Okay, you got me GB. I should have looked closer. I mistook the curved front teeth for a beak!

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  4. I think it is the head of a baby, or perhaps embryonic, one of those thingies that M. Night Shayamalan had in his movie Signs.

    Because those things are real, you know, just like goblins and ghosties, and sometimes they go bump in the night....

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  5. I await with bated breath....

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  6. Looks to me like an essential ingredient in some Wiccan recipe.

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  7. Indeed, it is remarkable. I have a similar skull--that of a tree squirrel--atop my refrigerator. I am thinking of gluing it to the top of a piece of upright petrified wood, but am struggling over whether doing so would disrespectful. Part of me thinks I should bury the little skuul, but the rest of me sure likes having it around.

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  8. P.S "I don't think it was a mouse - I think it was a little bird?"

    Look at the front teeth. It was a rodent.

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    Replies
    1. Okay Snowbrush, you got me too! Not all of us are rodent experts you know!

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  9. It must have been a mouse, I'd say. We don't have any rodents smaller than a baby mouse. Where was the rest of it? No idea.

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  10. My brother, a builder, worked on a haunted house in England. One of the inhabitants was a disembodied head which cruised around the house, why I'm not sure but it must have involved a torso and cranium parting company at some stage. Perhaps you are onto something similar here. Look out for a very small spectre.

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    Replies
    1. Hahaha! Intriguing thought VenDr. A headless mouse-ghost. Or perhaps something Pratchettesque like 'Death of Rats', otherwise known as 'The Grim Squeaker.'

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_(Discworld)#The_Death_of_Rats

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