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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (July 24, 2017)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JULY 24, 2017 Business uses beetles to clean flesh off of hunting trophies Like the plot of a horror movie By RAELYNN RICARTE The Dalles Chronicle Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian A good Samaritan helps supress a small brush fire on the side of U.S. Highway 30 just outside of Knappa on Friday afternoon. Two small fires scorch Knappa By JACK HEFFERNAN The Daily Astorian Two small fires in Knappa, one that burned the inside of a home and the other on the westbound side of U.S. Highway 30, kept firefighters busy Friday afternoon. The first, at a small home on Knappa Platt Road, was reported after 1 p.m. Knappa Fire and one Astoria Fire engine responded and were able to contain the blaze. Less than an hour later, a small brush fire with flames about 2 to 3 feet high started on the highway just a few miles west. The Oregon Department of Forestry’s Astoria District put out the fire within a few minutes. Liz Muniz, who lives near the site of the brush fire, said she heard the fire crackle while she was in her backyard. She also saw the Colin Murphey/ The Daily Astorian Firefighters quickly con- tained a blaze on Knappa Platt Road Friday after- noon that gutted a small structure. No injuries were reported. flames, which brought back unpleasant memories of a wildfire she experienced in 2015 when she was living in Northern California. “It scared me half to death,” Muniz said. “I moved here to get away from that.” LYLE, Wash. — The idea of beetles stripping flesh from bones sounds like the plot of a horror movie but, in the case of a Lyle business, it is how beau- tiful pieces of art are created. “They do not bite humans, they do not carry diseases and they are not invasive,” said Ken Hansen, owner of Kodiak Bones & Bugs Taxidermy. He is known as the “bug guy” because he keeps 400,000 beetles in a shop that is far enough away from the house to keep his wife, Deb- bie, happy. Since she is also a biolo- gist, Hansen’s wife doesn’t mind the postal deliveries of animal skulls, or being in the presence of so many insects. It is the smell of decay that she wants to keep away. “This process doesn’t smell as bad as you might think it would, but it has brought grown men to their knees — some people have a problem with it and some don’t,” Hansen said. Gleaming white skulls, including a huge one from a Kodiak brown bear, line shelves in the shop and several are prominently displayed in the Hansen home. On their coffee table is a polar bear skull that Hansen brought from Kodiak, Alaska, where he started the busi- ness. He is currently process- ing a polar bear skeleton for the North Slope Borough in Nome. Bare skulls, known as “European mounts” have become a conversation piece for visitors curious about Ken’s unusual retirement profession. “It’s so out there, it’s so dif- ferent — I’m not doing this for the money, I enjoy it,” he said. Mark B. Gibson/The Dalles Chronicle Ken Hansen, owner of Kodiak Bones & Bugs Taxider- my, stirs through the bedding mixture in a tray contain- ing hundreds of the flesh-eating beetles to expose the beetles and larva he uses to clean the flesh from ani- mal skulls in his workshop near Lyle, Wash. “The beetles do the heavy lift- ing and I don’t need to charge you a lot of money to give you a nice trophy.” The cost of preparing smaller game animals is $125 and increases by $50 for larger game. Selling beetles to start new colonies is where the money is at, said Hansen. Customers can order 5,000 beetles for $450, 1,000 for $125 or 300 for $60. He throws in 30 to 40 percent “extras” just to be sure of the quantity when he fills orders. Cleaning process The beauty of having a skeleton cleaned by beetles is that the exterior isn’t marred by tools used to remove the meat. Nor is it boiled, which loosens sutures, cracks teeth and destroys the delicate inner bones of the nasal structure, which Hansen believes is an integral part of the animal. “The European mount is growing in popularity because it keeps the skull authentic and makes it a nice show piece,” he said. The Dermestid beetles owned by Hansen are a spe- cialized species that eat only cold, dead flesh. The bugs are frequently fed pikemin- now, a predator fish that fed- eral agencies pay to get out of the Columbia River, and the colony consumes about 20 pounds a week. Hansen said the beetles prefer drier meats, so freezer burned meals are ideal. He also feeds them butcher scraps or hunting waste. “They also like hot dogs, that seems to be a favorite,” he said. The bugs are divided among 80 trays — there are about 5,000 in each — and burrowed into Styrofoam, wood shavings and skeletal dust from their meals. “They are feeding and breeding and chugging along,” said Hansen. He said beetle larvae, which look like small centi- pedes, clean the skulls and 1,000 larvae can remove all traces of meat from a deer skull in about 10 days. “They are very surgical,” he said. He said the beetles are used in museum and university col- lections around the world because they are so fastidious in their work. However, the cleaning pro- cess can get interrupted occa- sionally because the beetles stop eating for 10 days to two weeks. “No one really knows why they do this, I’ve done a lot of research but nobody seems to know why,” said Hansen, who has learned to just wait for their appetite to return. Finishing work Once the beetles fin- ish cleaning, Hansen takes over. He submerges the skull in Dawn detergent in warm water to pull the grease out of the bone. He changes the water frequently over a couple of months. When the skull is oil-free, he soaks it in hydrogen per- oxide and briefly puts it in the sun to bleach. By the time he sends the skeleton back to customers, the smell of decay is completely gone. Although Hansen once worked alone, he has got- ten busy enough raising bee- tles and shipping them to cus- tomers around the world that he has partnered with Tim Louge, an avid hunter from The Dalles, for the finishing process. “I do 40 to 50 a season and require that people send, or turn them over to me, with no hide because the beetles don’t like hair (or feathers),” he said. W A NTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber N orth w es t H a rdw oods • Lon gview , W A Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 HEALTH NOTIFICATION Are You Hard of Hearing? A major name brand hearing aid provider wishes to fi eld test a remarkable new digital hearing instrument in the area. Th is off er is free of charge and you are un- der no obligation. Th ese revolutionary 100% Digital instruments use the latest technology to comfortably and almost invisibly help you hear more clearly. 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