Gone Feral In Idaho

Here's the 2012 grow-op.  I just re-potted some maters into bigger pots, burying them up to their necks. The fan helps build strong stems and keeps fungus gnats away. We had a plant full of them that I got rid of, but the damn things keep popping up. Fungus gnats look a bit like fruit flies, but they love to lay eggs in the soil of houseplants and will eat the root structure, often stunting a plants growth, but usually killing baby seedlings if there numbers are high enough. This is the first real harvest of the season. These are collards and broccoli we planted back in October that were in hoop houses. I'm not dead set on doing it again next fall, but we do have a lot of garlic coming up, so maybe we'll focus on that next time.  Here is Sadie posing with my new bargain find. I plan to bring it to Vegas for my first International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners conference in June.  It will be 5 years in November that I started with the Coroner's office. I...

A bit on the Clark County office in Vegas.

I won't post them here, but will provide a link to a disaster cleanup place's website. I've been the one that had the really nasty job of removing bodies from scenes like the ones they show. I warn you, it is pretty gross. http://www.cleanqueens.com.au/scenes/index.html Their "mascot" seems a bit sexist, and maybe a bit tripped out on strong cleaning chemical fumes, but a lot of their site is interesting to peruse. I don't agree with this though, but I won't get into particulars in this post. I don't 100% disagree with their statement, but I feel there are some exaggerations to these type of statements. Violent death and body decomposition are biohazards. Through blood and air borne pathogens you risk HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, e.coli and hantavirus.

I am now a registered board certified medicolegal death investigator. Whew, that was a mouthful.

Click the photo for a pretty extensive overview of the postmortem decomposition process.  Yes there are gross pictures, so be warned.  From emedicine.com  In the business, we call these cases, decomps.  The photo above would be called skeletal though.  

It wasn't until almost 10 years after taking a human osteology class (study of the human skeleton) for anthropologists and archaeologists, taught by a student of Bill Bass, that I ended up working in forensics.  Years ago, when I was studying to be an archaeologist I used to questioned the sanity of fellow students that were looking to forensics as a career choice.  The Midwest Bioarcheology & Forensic Anthropology Association meeting acronym said it all BARFA.  I only wanted to work with really old bones, the beautifully bleached, not covered in flesh ones.  The funny thing is that I think I'm the only one out of that group that actually got into the field, of forensics, that is.  I think the only foot in the door I had was archaeological excavation experience and a good knowledge of the human skeleton and how to differentiate bone fragments into either human or non-human, which is pretty important every once in a while in my job.  So much of my traini...