Vulture Culture 101: A Book For People Who Like Dead Things is the first book written by and for the subculture that has grown up around the appreciation of hides, bones and other animal specimens. While other books have tackled niche topics like taxidermy and skull identification, this one is intended to be a complete guide to learning about Vulture Culture and helping the reader get involved. Currently the manuscript is most of the way done, minus the guest essays by other writers that I’m going to include on topics like bone cleaning and hide tanning. Here’s the current working Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Roots and Revival: Historical and Modern-Day Vultures
Chapter 2: The Successful Scavenger: Where Do I Get My Goods?
Chapter 3: Identifying Hides, Bones and More
Chapter 4: Here’s Where It Gets Messy: Processing Raw Specimens
Chapter 5: Put Your Best (Rabbit’s) Foot Forward: Displaying and Caring For Your Collection
Chapter 6: Vultures and Our Neighbors
Chapter 7: Rewilding the Beast: Vulture Culture as a Return to Nature
Conclusion
Appendix I: Further Resources
Appendix II: Recommended Nature-based Nonprofits
Following the successful funding and self-publishing of my previous major creative effort, the Tarot of Bones, I opted to follow the same route with Vulture Culture 101. To that end, there was a successfully funded IndieGoGo campaign in spring of 2018 to raise funds for printing the book, along with other attendant expenses. The book was released in May 2019 and is available at https://www.vultureculture101.com/buy-the-book/