Saturday, November 25, 2006

Post Thanksgiving Brain Tanning Adventures

This is my first blog. I don't really know how to go about starting this, but I guess I'll just write about what I did today. "MMC5th" and I are attempting to brain tan 2 deer hides. We have already fleshed them, and they have been soaking in wood ash and water for the past 3 days. We were getting all ready to remove the hair and the whole layer of skin which holds the hair follicles today, but we discovered they have not had enough time in the ash solution. We went to Ingles anyways to buy some brains, and all they had was canned pork brains in milk gravy (Rose Brand). We proceded to fill our basket with 16 small cans, and in the process I became a little over eager and accidentally knocked a neighboring jar of pig feet over. The glass shattered in the aisle, and the pig feet started protruding from the mess.

When we got back to my place, it just so happened that my neighbor's little nephew had just shot his first deer, so there was a lot of excitement. Both my neighbor and his daddy are taxidermists, and both were present, so we got quite a lot of tanning tips when we busted out our hides to check on.

Later we went to Flick video to select the evening's entertainment, and at some point during our hour in that vortex, there was some discussion about renting some redneck deer hunting stand up comedy video that promised a special appearance from Bigfoot. I decided I didn't need to pay for that kind of entertainment as it seems to be readily available at my back door.

The guy that gave me my hide is a nice young fellow from East Tennessee that SG introduced me to. We met up with him at dusk in the Slab Cafe parking lot the other day. SG told him that she was knitting leg warmers, and he got really excited to tell us he and his girlfriend have been making pony bead bracelets. Then he said, "Hey, we should all get together sometime and knit and make bracelets!" I thought that was a really sweet proposition coming from some East Tennesse deer hunter.