While digging around in the stump dirt Thursday, I uncovered some found art.  Lucy must have buried a carcass in the base of the stump because my scrabbling fingers turned up tufts of fur and leg bones...and then this perfect skull.

I found a very useful key for identifying mammal skulls and soon discovered the skull's owner.  The answer is after the second picture for those who want to guess.



The first distinguishing feature is the large gap between the majority of the teeth and the incisors, which determines that the animal was either a rodent or a rabbit.  If you look closely below the big incisors at the front of the jaw, you'll notice two smaller teeth tucked back into the skull.  These peg teeth are used for grabbing or cutting food and identify my skull as a rabbit.

I find skulls endlessly fascinating and once had a collection, but eventually learned that collections bog me down.  So I gave this rabbit to our winesap apple tree as a source of calcium.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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