I think I've already shared my thoughts about taxidermy and vulture culture before, but in the context of this and the previous 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, as shown here) 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. We were near a pond that had previously had a lot of surrounding mining activity. Our lead scientist explained that last year, there were a lot of scattered deer bones found near the area, and I subsequently kept my eyes out for some bones.
And lo and behold, I found a leg!