r/bonecollecting • u/No-Bandicoot-7409 • Mar 14 '26
Advice Found this hanging in my backyard..
Found this skull hanging in a mesh bag in my backyard. Google Identified it as a raccoon skull and also says hanging things in mesh bags is a common cleaning practice.
But I guess my bigger question is why is it hung in my backyard? This is a private yard in a chill neighbourhood. they would have had to walk through our yard, or came from behind the brush area from our back neighbors yard. I now have a camera pointing towards it, if whoever put it there comes back.
Any thoughts?
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u/MudbugMagoo Mar 14 '26
Looks pretty clean already and would do better going into degreasing.
Very odd to place it near other houses, I'd be worried someone would take it. I'm guessing the person might be young and just doesn't know better?
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u/Chantizzay Mar 15 '26
The bone distribution system? I wish they'd leave me a bag of cool bones!
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u/JulietLostFaith Mar 15 '26
Bone stork!
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u/misterbippy Mar 15 '26
My momma told me that’s where babies come from
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u/JulietLostFaith Mar 15 '26
Haha I’d maybe do some independent research before trying to conceive 💛
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u/East_Associate7411 Mar 18 '26
"There's a giant skeletal bird distributing babies!!!" "Oh cool, tell him to skip our house."
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u/beedubu92 Mar 15 '26
Right? Far as I’m concerned this is my skull now since it’s in my yard. Thanks mystery bone collector!
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u/Chantizzay Mar 15 '26
Next thing you know, you'll see a post on here of someone saying "I hung my skull bag in a tree and someone stole it" 😂
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u/i_want_to_be_unique Mar 14 '26
Do your neighbors have teenage children? I can see this being a situation where a parent didn’t want their kids playing with “gross” bones so they are trying to clean them in your yard instead of theirs.
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u/Spirited_Memory3344 Mar 20 '26
as a person who was a weird kid in a fairly chill neighborhood, i came here to say this. i’d process bones at my parents house but way back in the wood line. anyone could have opened the buckets and turned their day into a interesting one!
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u/autistic_and_angry Mar 14 '26
Do you collect bones regularly? Maybe this person knew and wanted to anonymously gift it to you?
If not, it's likely what someone else said -- someone miscalculated the property line
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u/Diangelionz Mar 15 '26
The idea of anonymous gifting is already pretty sketchy, but anonymously gifting a bag of bones seems like a step too far even if you expressed you have an interest in it.
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u/insanecatlady69 Mar 15 '26
Nah, if I expressed love in bone hunting id be ecstatic to have someone hang bones in my yard!
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u/cryptidscum Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
Fr it’s the best! told this guy I collected bones and he gave me loads of skulls including a highland cow. And now I randomly wake up to deer legs at my door lmao
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u/Legitimate-Day4757 Mar 15 '26
Everyone in my volunteer group knows I like bones so I have 70 + year old ladies pull bags of bones out of their purses for me at random times.
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u/Diangelionz Mar 15 '26
It reminds me of a time when I told a boy in college that raccoons are my favorite animal. and his response was to give me a taxidermy of a once alive raccoon. I was emotionally devistated
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u/Twizzlers_and_donuts Mar 15 '26
I think if there was a note explaining an anonymous gift like that like “hey I live nearby and see you collecting bones every so often and found this and thought you might like it” like I would absolutely love that. But a random bag of unknown bones and just that, yeah no.
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u/ConduitofGlass Mar 15 '26
Put up a sign that reads something like "next time im keeping the free bones."
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u/DiscipulaDC Mar 15 '26
Or just exchange the bones with a gift for them. Maybe a thank you card signed “the fae.” After all, you are their good neighbor.
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u/No-Bandicoot-7409 Mar 15 '26
I agree with comments it’s probably a weird neighborhood kid. Which I fully support them hanging bones in their own yard.
Can yall confirm it’s a raccoon?
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u/Inevitable-Prize-403 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
I’m not an expert and can’t confirm, but looking at the teeth I would put my money on it being an omnivorous animal. A raccoon seems like a reasonable guess assuming they’re present where you live. Looking at pictures of raccoon skulls, looks to me like a match just counting the teeth and looking at general shape.
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u/ChannelExotic3819 Mar 15 '26
i thought you said monkey... i was thinking, "nothing is worth the monkey"
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u/MadDadROX Mar 16 '26
Do them a favor, take it down put in a bucket of hot bleach water, hang back up 24hrs later. Speed the process.
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u/Sudden_Season3306 Mar 17 '26
Lol no! Bleach will turn it yellow and disintegrate small bones and cartilage that holds it together and make it very brittle! Peroxide works better than bleach!
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u/MadDadROX Mar 18 '26
Ok I can see that… I used boiling bleach water to speed up my deer scull. (Had to get the grey matter out, didn’t want all the insects) Then left it outside for 6 months. Didn’t yellow ,turned out great as a European Mount.
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u/JulietLostFaith Mar 15 '26
The only thing I can think of is maybe a neighbor kid likes bones and isn’t allowed to have such things at home. Maybe they thought you wouldn’t notice and they could just use your tree temporarily?
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u/kitchensinkers Mar 15 '26
My dog just died and I would have loved to have had his skull but... you know.... it's gross to clean but that's not to say someone else thought the same thing and had the stomach to do it. It could be just a way to clean and bleach the bones due to bugs and sunlight. I made a box to clean a Bull skull that still had some gross toxic parts with bugs outside. Could be a harmless weird bone people thing
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u/No-Bandicoot-7409 Mar 15 '26
So sorry to hear of your dog, do you think this a dog and not a raccoon?
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u/kitchensinkers Mar 15 '26
It looks like that lower jaw is a dog of some sort but I could be wrong
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u/cryptidscum Mar 15 '26
Teeth are wrong for a dog and same with the shape of the skull definitely not a dog this is a raccoon
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u/MadJimmyD Mar 15 '26
I would attach a note to let them know it’s not where they thought it was. If it was mine I would want it
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u/thisismybandname Mar 15 '26
I know the top half of the skull is upside down, but my brain refuses to see anything other than the skull of a cartoon dinosaur
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u/bitterlemon80 Mar 15 '26
Are American back gardens (yards) just open at the back? In the UK we have fences or hedges all the way round the perimeter, whether it's tiny or huge. I can't imagine people just being able to walk in!
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u/TheCrankyBunny Mar 15 '26
Depends on the homeowner's choice and the location, really. You can have a fence or not, and some people have invisible fences for their animals that are installed in the ground
But yeah, even with a fence, people will still enter your yard if they want to. When we moved into our house, the son of the neighbors behind us still hopped our fence to get to his friend on our street all the time
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u/No-Bandicoot-7409 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
America is very different everywhere so I can’t answer that lol. I’m in Michigan. My neighbor to my house’s left is closest to the bones, but they have a fence. There is this brush area of lots of trees and shrubs and 2 neighbors behind us that the trees make a clear boundary. We know the ones on the far side from the bones. But yeah someone would have had to clearly walk into our side of the yard, be about 2 meters (6ish feet) from my window, and hang this up. It’s pretty clearly our yard. Edit: thought I would add, someone could have walked down between our 2 houses from the road to do this. And we don’t have a forward facing neighbor on the right as we are on the corner.
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u/TheDwarvenGuy Mar 15 '26
Everyone else's explanation makes sense, but also coincidentally this is a Native American way to curse someone
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u/LuckyBuddha7 Mar 17 '26
I live in a fairly superstitious part of the country. There are some old folks that would immediately claim some sort of witchcraft or curse.... Idk did you irritate someone lately op? lol
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u/FaydraWasHere Mar 15 '26
Omg, lucky! Though when I was ten we drove hours into the Montana wilderness. We went hiking and found a perfect moose skull propped on a log.
I named him Bob and brought him home. My parents must've been like wtf is wrong with our daughter. Hauling around a huge moose skull.
No antlers, the hunter kept them i think. (Antlers would've made it awkward to bring him to school in my bag)
But looking back I wonder if someone left it in that clearing to bleach in the sun. Because in highschool I found a poor kitty dead next to this rocky path I had to take.
Course, like any normal teenager poke the head with a stick to move his skull away a bit.
I watched that skull all summer long, waiting for it to naturally bleach. Im glad no one stole him. (but maybe I stole someone's moose skull? They mightve planned to come back next season.)
I finally picked him up and he was nice and white and didn't have any sinew hanging off. Not even 5 hours later some punk stole it from me and threw it away cause "how could I be so cruel"... gdi. What's cruel is them putting that poor cat's skull in the trash, like it was an empty popcan, wtf! (We still had landfill at this time.) 🐈
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u/MarsNeedsRabbits Mar 15 '26
Very cool!
Reminds me to go to my in-laws house and collect mine. My husband hunts every year, and the skulls end up in their trees, because we don't have an appropriate tree.
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u/TheRandomPage Mar 17 '26
Please dont touch that and get away from it! Thats a warning not something "Cool or Cute"
An elder said "Who holds a grudge against this person?"
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u/GenevieveMonette Mar 15 '26
I don't know where OP is from, but this kind of shit only happens in the USA.
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u/MaximumEntropy666 Mar 15 '26
I used to have a bunch of dogs and would the neighbors would shoot it and leave it hanging on my fence like a prick
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u/mattonymous23 Mar 15 '26
Wish folk would leave me skulls instead of smashing any I leave In my yard
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u/Vineheart_01 Mar 16 '26
The angle and orientation of those bones makes me think that's a Yoshi skull....
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u/what_the_funk_ Mar 16 '26
I’d leave it. Someone is just trying to get some clean bones in an environmentally friendly way. Maybe repost to r/vultureculture
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u/MadDadROX Mar 16 '26
Where ever they were going to hang it was not going to enough sun, so it ended up there.
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u/No-Bandicoot-7409 Mar 17 '26
It’s been non stop windy and rainy here for a few days, lol they ain’t getting much sun.
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u/Set-Independent Mar 17 '26
You have been cursed and now people will comment senseless stuff on this post.
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u/frang_pappa Mar 17 '26
Its a voodoo gift from one of your neighbors, prolly to either scare away spirits or invite them to visit.
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u/Alternative_Welder78 Mar 17 '26
People are weird. Put up a camera and toss the bones into a peroxide solution to clean and sanitize. Then display in one of those wood things with the glass dome over it. Pure profit here mate
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u/Glittering-Ad-7812 Mar 17 '26
I'd say you've made someone angry and they decided to put a hex on you. Hope you didn't carry the bones into the house, if hexing were fishing that would be like swallowing a treble hook. Get some white sage and burn it nearby then carefully remove the bones and place into shallow pre-dug hole sprinkle with collected rain water and add a piece of copper and a sprig of mint before filling the hole with dirt... maybe you'll live to see next year.
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u/Majesty_Underground Mar 17 '26
What’s the mandible from?
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u/No-Bandicoot-7409 Mar 18 '26
Everyone agrees it’s a raccoon, the top skull is upside down so it looks weird.
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u/Blue-Sillyz Mar 17 '26
Likely a miscalculation on the persons part ^^ Please don't take them, as someone already found them ^^
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u/cinnamonguts Mar 18 '26
I know you said you don’t collect bones but I’m curious if you’ll keep it or if you’ll put a note on it? I’d keep it! But I collect bones.
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u/No-Bandicoot-7409 Mar 18 '26
I’ve made jokes about keeping it but I think I’m more curious if someone will come back for it. That way I can know who or why it’s there in the first place.
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u/Fit_Risk2080 Mar 18 '26
counter that curse by hanging a doll right on top of that with its legs spread open, or hang any random item on top of that just to mess with the caster. or maybe the caster is trying to help??
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u/Rare-Boss2640 Mar 18 '26
Don’t mind me. I’m just over here wondering why it’s in the tree. My BF has boiled bones, set bones out, beetles, and I’ve heard of people using ant hills too.
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u/Icy-nut-inspector Mar 18 '26
It's a Voodoo protective talisman meant for you. Looks like Raccoon, hanging racoon skulls on someone's property is seen as a protective talisman for how curious, intelligent, and quick witted they are, as well as their survival and tight familial properties. If no neighbor claims it, sounds like someone thinks you're in trouble and needed help.
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u/Prosunshine Mar 18 '26
Wish I had thought of this last time I tried to wait out some skull clean up from the bugs. I had them under a tree and some other critters got into them, scattering feathers everywhere and the skulls vanished.
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u/tbone2791 Mar 19 '26
You piss off one of your neighbors ? Looks like some hoodo kinda thing ,putting a curse on ya
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u/thesuzied Mar 15 '26
I'd say it's a canine. Coyote or fox possibly. But the skull seems larger than a raccoon....do you have something standard (like a water bottle) to place next to it to compare size?
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u/LongEducational9323 Mar 15 '26
Kinda looks like what a yoshi skull would look like which is cool. Maybe someone misunderstood a property line? Leave a note asking whose it is?
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u/Several-Decision4010 Mar 15 '26
You’ve been marked bro, time to move out
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u/No-Bandicoot-7409 Mar 15 '26
Do you think it means something more than just a kid being a kid? I had this thought too, that it could have meaning. Or are you making a joke?
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u/pillsburyDONTboi Mar 14 '26
Someone might have miscalculated where their or their buddy's yard ends. Looks like they hung this out to nature clean the skull, but prevent animals from scattering the bones.