Waste Not, Want Not
Roadkill Taxidermy - Snakeskin
No matter where you live in the country, there is one ubiquitous thing we all see on a daily basis... roadkill. Now, most people will see a dead animal on the side of the road and keep driving, but often there are some really unique ways you could honor those animals by stopping to try and preserve some (if not all) of the animal for different uses.
Last summer on the way back up to our cabin I happened across a recently hit bull snake laying across the road. Bull snakes are amazing non-venomous snakes that provide a lot of ecological benefit and I was sad to see that someone had either accidentally or intentionally hit it while trying to cross the dirt road. So, I hopped out and grabbed him and decided to put his beautiful skin to good use.
Once back at my shop I started the skinning process, and snakes are much easier than most other animals to skin. So, with a sharp knife you do the following:
Remove the head (if venomous, be very careful);
Flip the snake so the underbelly is facing up, and then;
Start your knife just under the skin on the head side and split the snake straight down the middle until you reach the tail (I will cover how to do this with rattle snakes in a later post), and;
Start to peel the skin away from the meat just like you would pull tape from a piece of paper. Once started it should be pretty easy and you can pull it like a giant tube sock.
With your skin separated from the meat you have a few things to consider. First, you must decide if any of the meat is salvageable to eat (snake is delicious), but that will depend on how recently it was killed and if it baked in the sun for a while. Second, you have to make sure that there is no meat or remnants left on the skin itself before starting the tanning process. Third, if you don’t plan to tan right away you can roll the snake hide over a stick (shown below) and put it in the freezer until you are ready to tan.
But, assuming your meat is packed away and you’re ready to tan your clean snake hide we can move to the next steps. For tanning a snake hide you will need the following three things from your local grocer:
A clean mason jar or other sealable container;
Vegetable Glycerin, and;
90%+ rubbing alcohol.
You will need to mix a 50/50 solution in the mason jar of glycerin to alcohol and then place your snake hide inside and seal the lid. Leave your snake hide in this solution for six days at minimum (leaving it longer won’t hurt) and give it a good shake every day.
After the sixth day you can pull out your hide and lay it out to allow the alcohol to evaporate slowly. Once your skin begins to lose the alcohol odor you are set to do whatever you want with the skin! For the bull snake in this example I ended up attaching it to some cow-hide leather to make a really cool band for my cowboy hat... the options of what to do with these roadkill skins is truly endless!
