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Without a doubt, my weirdest customer EVER!
One of my new clients made it to the very tippy top of my "most bizarre customers" list today. As I was leaving her home this morning, I noticed some large, tapered objects in an enormous china hutch, interspersed between fossils and interesting stones. "Those are interesting. What are those anyway?" I inquired innocently. "Those? Those are baculum - penis bones. The big one is from a walrus," she replied. (In my entire educational career, including college, somehow I managed to miss the semester where they talked about how most mammals have penis bones. Either that or I managed to repress the memory somehow).
Laughing at my expression, she informed me that she was a biology professor at Chico State. So I naturally assumed that what I was looking at was a sort of natural history collection in her cabinet. She explained the story behind each of the fossils, petrified wood, and other cool bits of stuff that were so prettily displayed. "Are those cat skulls on the top shelf?" I asked. "Oh, yeah. The one on the left is Bootsie, my childhood kitty. Next to him is Sam, and that's Clara on the right." she explained. I was stunned into silence (difficult to do but possible if you catch me off guard) once the implication sunk in. I couldn't help it; I HAD to know: "Ok...how did you manage to, well, y'know..." (I had visions of her vet bringing her a severed head in a bag or something). "Get the heads from my dead cats?", she finished. "When they die, I wrap them tightly in window screen, bury them in a sunny spot, and then 16 months later I go back & dig em up." She then elaborated. "Bootsie's skull is more brown than the others because my parents buried him. They wrapped him in a plastic bag and he didnt decompose quickly. I dug him up and re-buried him every year for 10 years before it was clean enough."
Laughing at my expression, she informed me that she was a biology professor at Chico State. So I naturally assumed that what I was looking at was a sort of natural history collection in her cabinet. She explained the story behind each of the fossils, petrified wood, and other cool bits of stuff that were so prettily displayed. "Are those cat skulls on the top shelf?" I asked. "Oh, yeah. The one on the left is Bootsie, my childhood kitty. Next to him is Sam, and that's Clara on the right." she explained. I was stunned into silence (difficult to do but possible if you catch me off guard) once the implication sunk in. I couldn't help it; I HAD to know: "Ok...how did you manage to, well, y'know..." (I had visions of her vet bringing her a severed head in a bag or something). "Get the heads from my dead cats?", she finished. "When they die, I wrap them tightly in window screen, bury them in a sunny spot, and then 16 months later I go back & dig em up." She then elaborated. "Bootsie's skull is more brown than the others because my parents buried him. They wrapped him in a plastic bag and he didnt decompose quickly. I dug him up and re-buried him every year for 10 years before it was clean enough."
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