Is a bird's foot bleachable and keepable?

November 27, 2007 8:15 PM

My fiancee found a bird's foot/claw on the ground. She thinks it's like a bone that can be boiled/bleached to sanitize it and have it as a weird knick-knack. I think it's more like a piece of meat that will rot and bring germs in to the house. Who's right?
posted by proj to grab bag (14 comments total)

Having eaten chicken feet, I can confidently tell you that they really do have some meat on them. Well, skin and tendons. Stuff that gets soft enough to chew when cooked.
posted by "Tex" Connor and the Wily Roundup Boys at 8:21 PM on November 27, 2007

There is some bone, some cartilage, and some flesh. If you boil it for a couple of hours, the flesh will come off and you'll have just the tougher tissues. Then leave it in a dry place with air circulation for a few weeks. It will essentially mummify and last for some time without smell.
posted by Miko at 8:24 PM on November 27, 2007

yeah, my friend found a rabbit skull with a little gristle on it still... I believe he simply left it out in the sun for a month and the natural processes took care of it. I have plenty of little bone pieces in my house that I've found on the beach or in the woods - of course I don't take anything juicy, but it's ok to sanitize and keep.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:26 PM on November 27, 2007

You can just put it on a windowsill or porch or what have you and let it dry out naturally. I suspect boiling it would melt it because aren't birld feet really more like cartilage or something?

I have all kinds of stuff like this - a seahorse, a spider, and one of my salamanders, Bert, who escaped one day and wasn't found until I moved house and rolled up the rug some months later. Ernie was so sad :(

I'm sure people will tell you about horrible diseases, etc, but eh, I never worried about it.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:29 PM on November 27, 2007

I think it's something you either like, or something you don't like. Think of 'Uncle Tungsten' by Oliver Sacks. His own mother gave him the cadaver of a 14-year-old girl to dissect when Sacks was at the same age. I'm not sure if I agree with that. But, different strokes for different folks. I'm sure you and your fiancee will be able to work it out over time.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:31 PM on November 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

I suspect boiling it would melt it

No, not at all.

I used to work in environmental education, and we preserved stuff like this all the time. Cartilage doesn't melt. Boiling first has a few distinct advantages: it kills nasty bacteria, and it efficiently removes all the soft muscle flesh. If you don't boil, you will have to endure a period of time in which flies and maggots and other stuff make a temporary home in your curing bird's foot. Boiling for an hour or so will clean and sterilize it to the point where it's not a valuable home for any invertebrate critters.

Cartilage is tough stuff, remember. We've all had buffalo wings - fried in oil at 500 degrees. They don't melt. Boiling water is only 212.

Boil first, then air-dry for a few weeks.
posted by Miko at 8:39 PM on November 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

I have done this. When I lived in Eastern Europe you would get a chicken at the market with the head and the feet stuffed inside it. I liked the weird way the feet looked. So, I decided to take the feet and dry them out on the porch. I tied them together and hung them outside for... a long time. Now they're inside and then hang in my house by a red ribbon. They do not smell. They did not get bugs. I did not boil them. They look perfectly awful and I like them. (Photo of me and chicken head)
posted by jessamyn at 9:10 PM on November 27, 2007

I would not boil it as it might soften the scales of the foot.
I once took the feet from a roadkill hawk and covered them with salt for a few days and then hung them up to finish drying.(Illegal, I know, to keep raptor parts) Most songbird size feet have very little meat on them, mostly tendon, bone and scales so it will not take much to dry it out.
posted by Iron Rat at 9:28 PM on November 27, 2007

If you leave it to dry it will work well enough.

I have a whole hummingbird I found in a parking lot last year. It is tucked on one of my bookshelves, much to the dismay of my mother, who thought it was something I'd bought instead of a little dead bird. I just left it on my balcony in the sun during three weeks in the summer.
posted by winna at 10:13 PM on November 27, 2007

Aye, it's the scales that are the ticket. Neither muscle nor bone, just keratin I guess. Making sure you get all the meat either out from inside or sufficiently dry is the tricky part. But I suspect time, air, heat, and/or salt will take care of that.
posted by eritain at 10:27 PM on November 27, 2007

your fiancee is right. curio shelves all over the world are filled with stable, bleached-bone knickknacks.
posted by bruce at 11:08 PM on November 27, 2007

Pack it in salt for a month.
posted by bricoleur at 5:23 AM on November 28, 2007

What bricoleur said. Hoodoo doctors have been preserving chicken feet for ages now, and I believe the 'stick it in a tub of salt' method is well-favored.
posted by kalimac at 7:23 AM on November 28, 2007

Burying in salt is a great way, too. That's another good way to go. It has a similar effect to boiling - completely dehydrates flesh and kills bacteria, making the material inhospitable to bugs.
posted by Miko at 7:51 AM on November 28, 2007