Skeletons are so white and beautiful, but usually they come with all this carcass stuck to them. What’s a person to do? That’s why Dapper Cadaver’s Strange Answers is here.

Well, you could bury the bones and let nature do it’s thing. This works quite well actually, but it takes time. And you run the risk of detritovores and scavengers making off with the remains.

A commonly held notion is that you can boil bones clean. Let me warn you, boiling rotting carcasses is a great way to make rotting carcass soup and a terrible way to clean a skeleton. You know how chicken soup on the stove fills a house with it’s deliscious smell? Imagine that’s a dead raccoon in there. That’ll cure the common cold.

Beetles are the best way to clean a corpse. The beetle in particular is called the Dermestid officially, but goes by many other names like the hide beetle, the carpet beetle, the larder beetle, and the flesh-eating beetle, because of what they eat - everything except glass, steel, and bone. Throw a buffalo sized head in to a container with a thousand or more dermestids, and they’ll leave nothing but the bones in a matter of weeks. Not overnight, but still the fastest game around. Dermestids are handy because they can crawl into eye sockets and nasal passages and get all the meat, and brains, from those hard to reach nooks and crannies.

Dermestids eat cartilage too, which is why you never see a real museum skeleton with the nose bones, ear bones, or it’s chest plate in tact. All of those parts are cartilege. Usually the sternum and center ribs are replaced with synthetics for display purpose. It’s also why you’ve never seen a shark skeleton, despite seeing shark jaws at every corner cabana.

If you want to start cleaning bones you’re going to need thousands of these little buggers. Many taxidermy shops sell guides to raising and using them, and many sell the bugs themselves. Just don’t let them get away. Eating everything is what dermestids do best. Just like the flesh eating beetles in The Mummy movie.

As part of Dapper Cadaver’s ongoing Monster Monday series, today I bring you a very special tribute to all the mother monsters out there. It is a testament to our love of mothers and our sympathy for them that in the mythological tradition of 6 billion people spanning 10 thousand years I could barely find 10 beings that could rightly be called monster mothers. Those that do fit the bill though are terrifying and powerful indeed, like a rampaging mother grizzly horribly mutated and kind of hot.
10. Mother-Of-Fishes - As her name states, a giant fish that protects all the fish and creatures of the sea and inland waterways. Said to be a trout so large her back is an island with trees growing on it. MILF factor - 0

9. Gargamelle - Gargamelle is not just the evil alchemist who wants to eat smurfs or something in the smurfs, Gargamelle is also a giantess in French mythology and the mother of Gargantua. MILF factor not much judging from this picture

8. Mother Flog - Mother Flog is a stout little matron elf who hides in saucepans to catch greedy children in the act of ruining their appetites. She then flogs them mercilessly. MILF factor - despite a sexy name, Mother Flog just doesn’t follow through.

7. Coinchenn - A dog headed woman and the fatal protector of her child, the beautiful Delbehaem. A prophet told Coinchenn she would die once her daughter was engaged, so Dog-Head took to decapitating every young man who came within 50 feet of her daughter. The heads were displayed on brass spikes in Coinchenn’s garden. MILF factor - Delbehaem must have gotten her hot body from this half-milf, but Coinchenn was cursed with a head only a furry could love.

6. Bapets - Bapets are a monster already covered in the Monster Monday blog at Dapper Cadaver. These creatures were big breasted cannibals that loured toddlers away from their village and suckled them on poison milk. MILF Factor - What part of big breasted cannibal isn’t a turn on?

5. Medusa - Everyone should know about Medusa, the queen gorgon with hair of snakes whose gaze could turn a man to stone. But did you know she’s also a mother? Yep, she gave birth to Pegasus, the winged horse. Somehow. At the time she was shacking up with Poseidon, the sea god, so he’s credited as the father, but I’d seriously file a paternity suit if I was him. MILF factor - Medusa had a hot torso, and possibly a hot lower section (although sometimes that’s snakes too). But the whole line about “putting a bag on her head” probably started here, because not only was Medusa face ugly and covered in snakes, she could literally kill a man just by looking at him.

4. Queen Alien - The mother of all the badness in the universe is this giant, egg laying, face hugging, 4 armed, 2 mouthed freak. Still she was a loving mother and a lady through and through. As this photo proves she knew how to find the right high heels to go with her outfit. MILF factor - in space no one can hear her scream!

3. Grendel’s Mom - It’s a pity no one got her name, because in many ways she was the greater monster than her son, Grendel. She was also a loving mother, and like any good mother, when her son was killed she swore revenge and took to devouring and disemboweling those responsible. MILF factor - Grendel’s mom is the only monster on this list to ever be portrayed on film by Angelina Jolie, nuff said.

2. Lilith - Adam’s ex-wife has quite a varied past, and according to legend is probably responsible for far more miscarriages than births. Still, as a Queen among the Succubus she actually made an honest man out of Lucifer for a time, and bore him the magic androgynous goat demon Baphomet. Like all of her marriages though it didn’t last. She’s also been wife to many a demon, dragon, snake, and owl, and to most of them she’s born strange children. Thanksgiving dinner at the Lilith house should be a sight to behold. MILF factor -Totally desrving of her title of the ultimate seductress and source of nocturnal emissions.
1. Echidna - Seriously, who else but Echidna could hold the top spot amongst monster moms? Okay, so you might not have heard of her, but she is the undying nymph, the she viper, and the mother of all monsters. That means everyone from Dracula to Godzilla has to send her a Mothers Day card and a bouquet of flowers. Among the monsters she birthed were Cerberus, the Sphynx, the Chimera, the Hydra, and many more, including, according to the Greeks, all monsters everywhere. MILF Factor - She had the torso and head of a beautiful woman, the body of a snake, and unspeakable power. Pretty attractive so far, but with a title like the Mother Of All Monsters she must get pregnant at the drop of a hat, so in terms of wearing protection I’d recommend a suit of armor.

There are essentially two schools to making great cobwebs. Cobwebbing guns and stretch webbing. There’s a third technique I’ve devised I call Pro 90 Webbing, which I kept secret for years. Now that I’m working in the shop more than on set, I’m not doing cobwebs so much, and I’ll share my secrets in this article.

I find a lot of people when the want to go pro with awesome spider webs get the cob webbing gun without really knowing a lot about them. Cob webbing guns are great, but they’re no magic wand. I rarely use them because I find them to be a hassle to use, except for under certain circumstances. First, a cob webbing gun is basically a hot glue gun attached to an air compressor, so be aware that anything you spray down with these guns you’re spraying with hot glue, and there’s a good chance you will not be able to clean it off. The air compressor itself is noisy, expensive, heavy, and needs time to build up pressure. The final issue I have with cob webbing guns is the cheap ones and the homemade ones have a tendency to clog alot, and with most hot glue guns, it’s almost inevitable you will burn yourself if you do it enough. For these reasons I find the cobwebbing guns are best used on pro jobs like sets and haunted houses, things where you’ve got a lot of ground to cover, you never plan on cleaning it up, you’ve got some assistance, and you’ve got the cash to invest in a top quality gun and an air compressor. For doing home haunts, cobwebbing props, or cobwebbing areas you have to clean later, they don’t make the most since.

Stretch cotton webbing has a bad rap, but it’s actually pretty good if you’re patient with it. It’s also pretty much the only kind of cobwebbing that cleans up okay and doesn’t stain or stick to things.

HOW TO DO PRO 90 WEBBING
For really excellent, realistic webs, try the Pro 90 technique.
1. Start with ordinary stretch webbing, pull it tight and thin, but don’t worry about over working it at first.
2.Once the stretch webbing looks okay (not great), spray it with 3M 90 spray. This aerosol adhesive forms tiny strands that create cross webs. The glue also reinforces the cotton, so the strands are more visible. WARNING- this is glue, so it is difficult to clean up. Also keep away from open flames.
3. Now that the spider web is sprayed with glue you can sculpt the web even more. While it’s tacky, you can stretch out clumps of web, stick it to other parts of your set or prop, create holes in the web and more.
4. If you need the web to be more visible, try misting it with spray paint or dry brushing it once the glue has dried.
5. Use scissors to trim any excess.

The photos in this post show the same candelabra decorated with both stretch webbing and stretch webbing that’s been given the Pro 90 treatment. 3M 90 is available at most hardware stores and currently costs $9 - $15 per can.

As part of Dapper Cadaver’s ongoing Monster Monday’s project today I bring you the most horrible thing Switzerland has ever produced, the Butatsch Ah ILgs.

The Butatsch is a great and terrifying amorphous blob, like a swollen stomach, but covered with leering eyes that can shoot fire. The Butatsch lived at the bottoms of lakes, at the gateways between earth and hellish neitherworlds. The fire from its eyes was the very same as the hellfire of eternal damnation.

For I think obvious reasons, no fishermen would fish in the waters where the Butatsch was said to dwell, but the beast was so feared that no shepherd would allow there sheep to graze on any hillside facing his infernal lake.

Since no Butatsch has ever been photographed, the part of the Butatsch is being played by a Stichopus Sea Cucumber.

This one was harder than I thought. A fetal skeleton should have all the same bones as an adult skeleton, right?

Well no, actually, and it depends. It depends on when you check. A human fetus has no bones at all until the 7th week. Two bones come in during the 7th week. The femur, which is not surprising as it’s the largest, hardest single bone in the adult body. The second bone is the clavicle, also known as the collar bone, an oddly shaped little bone that holds up the neck. It’s small, but think of how important it’s job is.

The rest of the bones develop from the 8th to 15th week (2nd to 4th month). So by the 5th month a fetal skeleton is complete. Well almost complete. As we all know the teeth come in after birth, as does the knee cap (patella) which grows in between the 3rd and 6th year. That’s why baby legs have such a smooth taper from thigh to ankle - no knobby knee in the middle.

The last bone that the fetus grows is the hyoid bone, also known as the lingual bone or voice box. It’s the only bone in the human body not rooted against another bone, and it’s the one that makes articulate speech possible. In animals the hyoid bone is simply another part of the neck, not the floating wonder it is in humans. In fetal development the hyoid bone doesn’t grow until the 36th week, the 9th month. Then a baby is ready to be born.

A complete chart of fetal bones and their developments is available here

Of all the causes of death I’ve recreated over the years none raises more questions than the case of poor Harry (Henry) Eastlack.

I created the Henry skeleton for a set based on the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, where the real Harry Eastlack resides. Harry was born normal except for a big toe only slightly too large and irregular.

At age ten the muscle and flesh around his bones began turning to bone, a process called “Ossification” and sometimes poetically referred to as flesh turning to stone. Ossification is a normal process for growing and healing bones, but in Harry’s case it was running amok. The disease Harry had was named Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. The first symptom was bony nodules on his neck and shoulders, which when removed, triggered the growth of large nodules. Shortly after the onset of Ossification, Harry was unable to move any part of his body except his lips.

Harry died 43 years later of pneumonia and willed his unique body to the Mutter Museum. Here’s the real Harry’s skeleton

FOP Ossification remains with us today and still has not been cured