Playing With Dead Things: The Mummification of Beavis I, Part Eight: Wrap Party. Titter.

One last time, now.

Once more into the breach. I guess.

Deja vu.

It's been a while since we last saw Beavis the mummified rat. There are a few reasons for that, but I won't bore you with 'em. Suffice to say that when you've have a dead rat in the cupboard for seventy days, another seventy or so really don't seem like that big a deal. And maybe another seventy. Yeah.

For the record, Beavis has been dead for over a year.

Keep that in mind before y'go busting on him for his looks. Catty bitches.

Attention whores.

And we're back for more.

Matt's on the right, I'm on the left. He'll be doing most of the camera work this time around, since the wrapping and anointing and what-not's more of a one-person job.

Plus, we got rat gore on the camera last time while we were handing it back and forth. IT SMELLED LIKE ANGELS. EXCEPT NOT.

This proved to be excessive.

Always plan for the worst.

We didn't really expect Beav to be too goopy after nine months in the homebrewed natron, but we weren't taking any chances. "Liquifying rat innards" ain't about to outpace Chanel No. 5 in anything but staying power.

Funk level: Raunchy. Approaching Stanky.

Beav came out with less of a soul-killing stench this time, but the odor was still there. Fortunately, it was mostly in the natron. that was because the natron had done its job, and absorbed all of the extra moisture from his fetid little corpse.

The box smelled. The natron smelled. Beavis did not.

You might remember that we stuck Beav's organs in the smaller boxes, shown above. they're still in there, waiting for me to get off my lazy ass and piece together some canopic jars.

Did somebody kill a hooker in here?

Time to fire up that sweet, sweet dollar store incense.

Gotta set the mood, you know. THIS IS SACRED.

Scrape scrape scrape.

This time, scooping out the natron in the stomach was a much less disappointing experience.

The stuff was hardened into semi-solid blocks upon exposure to rat-juice, but it broke up pretty easily with only slight stabbing. The natron was discolored, too; sort of a urine-yellow, if the urinator in question drank a lot of Gatorade and wasn't into vitamins.

He carries a lot of tension in his back.

Verdict: Pretty dry. That's his tail he's balacing on, by the way, not his ass.

After much, much too long in the bed of natron, Beav felt a little like cardboard. If you tapped him, he made a hollow sound. His pink parts had turned brown, and looked a little like beef jerky. If I'd thrown him around a little too roughly, he might've even cracked. That's how dry he was. He was completely immobile, too; his joints and tail were locked in this position. Not how I'd want to spend an afterlife. But then, I didn't consider spitting on my hands and rubbing it into my ears a bath, either. RATS IS DIFFERENT.

Dollar store canned soup starts out this way.

And hey, speaking of baths: The Book of the Dead and Herodotus both recommend another palm wine rub-down at this point, but as I mentioned eariler, it's a little tough to get your hands on any palm wine beyond the courrugated tin shacks of a dozen African metropolises. So, I made do with hydrogen peroxide. Again. It's probably a stronger disinfectant, anyway. And honestly, he hardly needs it. There's nothing left on this little carcass any microbes would find even remotely appetizing.

He looks so natural!

A Beavis in repose. Real good view of those little beef jerky feets, here. ADORABLE, EVEN FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.

And hey, side note? Really happy with this. This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I took Beav out of the natron the first time around; a perfectly dessicated and putrescence-free little corpse. After his bath and towel-off... and I can say this with perfect honesty... he didn't smell at all. Not like anything. Not a damn thing. And that's a pretty good sign. Especially for a rat that's been dead for so long.

Hippie-stink, by the bottle.

And now, the anointing.

In case you weren't aware, before being wrapped, a proper mummy is slathered in aromatic oils. By happy coincidence, a lot of these oils... like the Sandalwood, Frankincense, Cassia, and Myrrh oils you can see in the last shot... also kill germs. So while giving the mummy a pleasant, we-wuzzn't-doin'-nuthin-officer odor, the stuff also offs any rogue necrophagus bacteria that might've slinked in since bathtime.

By the way: That big, plastic bucket contains palm oil. Lots of it. It's probably just my incompetence, but I swear I couldn't find anyone, online or off, willing to sell me less than a gallon of it at a time. So if you know any nifty palm oil projects or recipes, let me know. Because I've got a bucket of the stuff going bad in the closet as we speak. A LITTLE HELP, HERE.