27 Oct 2011
A Great Toothpick.
From John McPhee’s “Travels in Georgia” (New Yorker, April 28, 1973), about Carol Ruckdeschel and Sam Candler, who work for the Georgia Natural Areas Council. Oh, and they also pick up roadkill, preserve the pelts, and often eat the meat. In this passage, Carol is dismantling a weasel and drinking Scotch:
“I used to love to take clocks apart,” she said. “To see how they were built. This is the same thing. I like plants and anmals and their relationship to the land and us. I like the vertebrates especially.” The weasel’s tailbone was still in the skin. She tugged at it with her teeth. Pausing for a sip [of Glenlivet], she said that sometimes you just had to use your mouth in her line of work, as once when she was catching cricket frogs. She had a frog in each hand and saw another frog, so she put one frog into her mouth while she caught the third. Gradually, the weasel’s tailbone came free. She held it in her hand and admired it. “Some bones are real neat,” she said. “In the heart of a deer, there’s a bone. And not between the ventricles, where you’d expect it. Some animals have bones in their penises –raccoons, for example, and weasels.” She removed the bone from the weasel’s penis. It was long, proportionately speaking, with a hook at the penetrating end. It was called a baculum, she said, which meant “rod” in Latin. She would save it. Its dimensions were one way to tell the weasel’s age. Baculums are also involved in keying differences in species. Sam said he kept a raccoon’s baculum in his wallet because it made a great toothpick. He got out his wallet and displayed his great toothpick.