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.
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N orth w es t H a rdw oods • Lon gview , W A
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