I think I've already shared my thoughts about taxidermy and vulture culture before, but in the context of this and the next post, I might as well reiterate.
I am terrified of taxidermy. It's unnerving on the surface, and my compassionate and herbivorous self has always had a problem with not knowing WHERE taxidermied animals originated from. If I knew that the animal died from old age, I would have much less of a problem looking at it. However, in museums, you simply don't know. I'm not exactly *against* it, per se, it's more of a matter of fearing that the animal could have suffered or was killed for the cause of being on display, which I intensely dislike. I'm also not against hunting, I actually support it much more than factory farming, and I think it's probably the beast route for those of omnivorous tastes.
That said, I also have a contradictory fascination with vulture culture and bones. It might be because, when you find a bone in the wild, it's a safe bet the animal died naturally (Naturally also includes being mauled to death by mountain lions) Bones are creepy and cool, and I do like this culture of taking things that are dead and turning them into art or educational pieces.
As I stated yesterday, this was up in a "Restricted Access: Scientists ONLY" stretch of land owned by RMBL. Since public traffic isn't allowed, there were quite a few more treasures up here than you would normally find. I was very tempted to take this skull, but I felt like there was a sort of sacredness to the area.
I'm not sure what species this was, but just from looking at the teeth, it was definitely a rodent, probably a marmot, based on the size.

(I also saw a marmot that was literally the size of a dog today, just chilling on a rock and watching me collect plant specimens)