Last week Sarah unearthed this nearly completely decomposed bird skeleton. All that remained were some feathers and a little connective tissue. We have accumulated quite a collection of skulls and other bones during our 20 years as parents, including opposum, raccoon and cow skulls, small mammals from owl pellets, a deer skull and many, many more. I always encouraged the kids to clean up their finds and keep them, because, well, this is the closest I would ever get to living my childhood dream of being an archeologist it's educational. We've had only one forensic failure, when Stephen placed a dead turtle Sarah found in a bucket of fabric softener instead of bleach solution. It took us a few days to figure out where the stench was coming from. There was also the summer we bought Stephen a book about identifying roadkill. We spent the rest of the season pulling off of highways and freeways to examine remains, indentify them, and categorize them as "fresh" or "