The next leg in "Anything's" journey was to get cleaned up. The wildlife did a great job of removing all the soft tissue, but in the process made the bones quite muddy. I set about cleaning the bones by initally letting them soak in a bunch of five gallon buckets with a 3:1 ration (three gallons of water for one cup of bleach). Normally I am not a fan of bleach (it weakens bones), but since these bones were SO BIG, I used the bleach primarily to disinfect them. I usually pour in some cheap lemon dish soap as well, it does an awesome job of loosening up hard to clean dirt, yet keeping my hands baby soft. I let the bones sit in this mixture for about a week (changing the water once a day). I then set about the tedious task of scrubbing EVERY bone clean with a tooth brush. Although time consuming tooth brushes are small and get into most places, they do work well.
The next stage in the cleaning process was to make the bones 'presentable.' To do this I like to add a final shine to the bones. I feel this shine makes people feel they are 'safer' to touch (not disgusting-like), and it looks nice. To do this I laid the bones on a bunch of old newspapers and I bought some clear spray paint and sprayed it on. Each side got 3 layers of paint all about an hour apart. It took four cans to compelete this task.
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