My darling husband recently had the thought that people might not know where I'm sourcing my skulls from. As a cowboy and caregiver of living bovine creatures, his fear was that people would think we have a ton of dead cows laying about the ranch all willy-nilly. Let me inform you that this is not the case. I am sourcing them from ranches all over California, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and a few have even come from Pennsylvania from friends and family and their neighboring ranches. Every ranch, no matter how diligent they are at caring for the animals on their land, are going to experience death loss. It's a part of ranching life and culture to be able to deal with heart-breaking situations and find the silver lining or simply look forward. Death happens everywhere and even in the livestock industry from natural causes. A cow may just be old or have trouble calving or step off a hill funny and break her leg. These things happen everywhere and my initial thought when I saw my first skull and picked her up was that "I can't just leave her here". True, if I had, nature would have taken it's course and the coyotes and bobcats probably would have moved her off slowly and over several years. But something inside me that day last March just told me to pick part of her up and take it back to the headquarters. I felt that she had played her role on our ranch by raising calves and being a part of the land management and that her life was worth more than being scattered around until there was nothing left. We raise animals for food production to feed people, and each life that goes into the productive cycle is cared for and nourished their entire life until they leave us. I felt that just because a cow did not make it fully into the food production cycle, that her life was still worth celebrating and remembering. Perhaps as art in someone's home to be forever celebrated and remembered.
Truthfully when I started collecting the skulls last year my husband was a little turned off by the idea as I soon found out- he saw the skulls as a failure on his part. His whole life he has wanted nothing more than to be a good cowboy and learn all the ranching traditions handed down to him by family members. A sense of pride washes over him when we go out to check cows and calves and they all look slick, shiny and healthy. When we find one down or injured or dead from trying to birth a big calf, I know my husband can't help of let that eat at him. One year we had several "lepie" calves cruising around the yard as over-grown pets as my husband was bottle feeding them several times throughout the day. Their mothers had either passed on or rejected them and it was now up to us to keep them alive and healthy. Moments like this can be so rewarding when it works out and utterly devastating when it doesn't. A few of those heifer calves are now full grown cows on the ranch producing their own babies and living large out on the Coastal California hills.
