More dead animals?

In keeping with the dead animal theme, here's a collection of native Delaware animal skulls mounted on a driftwood door panel. We have: fox, seagull, deer, beaver, and muskrat. All were found in my travels to natural places (except the fox, who evidently fell into a shallow bunker at Cape Henlopen and died of thirst/starvation).

Stealth Attack Gull

A partner in crime of the Caribbean Death Otter. No, just kidding. This is a taxidermied (taxidermed?) ring-billed gull in a Plexiglas display case. Another State of Delaware rescuee. It call to mind Anton Chekov, no?

Goose

Here's a painting of a Canada goose I did a few years ago on an old hide stretcher. The wooden stretchers were used here in the mid-Atlantic to prepare and preserve muskrat hides, which during my youth were fetching around $7-$8 per pelt. Not so much these days, methinks. I had a stack of these, on which I was doing thematically related paintings (sometimes trite, like black labs, marsh scenes, etc.) to sell. People then started making requests, so I was being asked to paint shit like non-water dogs (sort of OK), flowers (huh?), and clowns (get the f**k out of here). I finally gave up - people were missing the obvious connection between the stretcher and the subject matter. I only hope these don't fall into the same category as those painted saw blades you sometimes see at the county fair...

Marvil's book

I mentioned this book in an early blog post. The title and author are self-evident. I actually have two copies of this (shown), one with dust jacket and one without. The book was a limited edition of 1000 copies for the Pilots Association members, so to have two under one roof is pretty neat, I think. This book is a gold mine for researching the maritime history of the Delaware Bay, although it's a bit dated. It was published back in 1965, so a lot of the more recent changes to the watershed are not reflected.

Caribbean Death Otter

Oh - I'd be quite remiss if I didn't post my Caribbean Death Otter. He's mean, he's fierce, and he can carry massive amounts of ordnance upstream to the target(s) of your choice. This otter has been there: The Bay of Pigs in 1961, The Battle of Bình Gia in 1965, Beirut 1975, Kabul in 1989, Baghdad in 1993, Somalia in 1998, New York City in 2001, etc. I cannot divulge his current whereabouts...


...but let's just say that Venezuelan crude is about to get much much cheaper and Iran is going to discover the internet.

Just kidding (to the NSA spooks reading this). This guy was a poor old river otter taxidermied way back in the late 1950's, and resided in the hallowed halls of the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife for many years, up until someone decided that dead, stuffed animals did not resonate with the image that the Department wanted to convey. Another trash can rescue ensued...

It's Fossil Friday #4

I know it's hard to tell from this image, but this is a chunk of fossilized wood (i.e. "petrified"). It was found near my home in Townsend, DE while a friend was digging a pond, And you thought petrified wood was an artifact of the desert....

Insulator redux

This a another Brookfield insulator from the tracks near Clayton, DE. This one is a CD145 shape, for those who worry about such things...

A stepping off point

Once again, today's post represents something of a stepping off point. I realized some months ago that in order to accommodate my desire for doing one post per day for a year, I was going to have to expand the scope of my original intentions (old weapons). In that time, I've expanded into the realms of artwork, antiques and artifacts, and other ephemera that somehow became part of the collection I call "Flintlock's Arsenal".

I'm not yet halfway through the year yet, and if I'm going to make it all the way, I'm going to have to delve deeper into the ephemera of my stuff. I'm going to begin bringing in some more nautically themed items, including some old and interesting books. I'm going to begin including modern pocket and sheath knives that I sometimes carry (well, I always have a knife, but different occasions call for different tools), and I've found a fix for my "Friday" dilemma.

To this end, the scan above is of a photograph that was in a box of old pictures I was asked to take to the trash by my employer (State of Delaware) 18 - 19 years ago. I hated to throw these out, as there were hundreds of different pictures, but I only had time to rescue a few from the top that interested me (boats, mostly). The rest were summarily hauled off to a landfill or whatever, and are probably 50 feet down in Cherry Island now.

The photo above has the following inscription on the back, in particularly florid penmanship:

35 ft Motor Boat 4007 ' "Henlopen" on the dock at Bklyn Navy Yard 2/22/34.

As I type this, I realize that this picture was taken on the same day (2/22) as my wedding anniversary, with a probability of 1 in 365 (or is it 1 in 730? I forget)

Old insulator #2

Another Brookfield CD145, this one is embossed with "W. Brookfield 45 Cliff St. NY" on one side and "PAT NOV.13.1883 FAB 12.1884" on the other. This insulator was make in December of 1884 in on Cliff St. in New York City, and was ultimately used, lost, and found along the train tracks north of Clayton, Delaware. Neat, huh?

Old insulator #1

In my misspent youth, one of the pastimes in my old hometown of Clayton, DE was to stroll the Conrail railroad tracks getting into all sorts of mischief - fishing from a railroad bridge, squishing pennies, playing guns, "hunting", and finding treasures. One of the treasures we used to find were the old glass insulators once used on telegraph and electric lines along the track. Among the more modern (i.e. post WW1) insulators such as the workhorse Whitehall Tatum #1 (found in abundnace in clear, light aqua, and dark aqua glass), we found some older gems such as the one above.

This one is a Brookfield CD 145, with some slight amber inclusions - probably from the late 1800's. There are a few minor chips in this one, which is a minor miracle since I've toted this with me for 25 years or so. One can lose themselves in the arcana of insulator collecting (just Google "glass insulators"), and there are some stunning old insulators out there in some out-of-this-world colors, but I have no interest in pursuing this as a collection. I'm going to post a couple of older models to commemrate my youth, but I'm not going to post the modern Whitehall-Tatum and similar pattern ones that decorate my shelves. These are too commonplace to be of much interest...

More stuff I pulled out of the water #8

These little stone spheroids are thought to be old millstones - not the big round affairs with the square hole in the middle, but smaller stones. I'm not sure what they would have milled, but I found them downstream of an old mill site when I was a young lad. They came from a gravel bed in Duck Creek, near Smyrna, DE, and I found them when I was about 9 or 10 years old while poking around in the creek for crayfish. They are probably archeologically significant (in context), alas, in my youth I failed to understand the importance of such things.