Fleshing - Process and Observations
Fleshing consists of the removal of the largest masses of red meat via grasping them in forceps and slicing them free of the bone with a scalpel. Forceps were necessary because the meat was extremely moist and did not experience traction under latex gloves. As the animal decomposed the muscle fibres lost their cohesion and began to disintegrate, although the drying process tended to clump the into huge, cohesive masses. The fleshing process took two days; during the interval, muscle left exposed dried to a thick red crust, about .5 cm thick, which did not yield readily to the scalpel.
Mammalian forelimbs are not attached to the axial skeleton by joints. In quadrupeds, the body hangs in a "sling" of muscle and tendon stretched between the forelimbs and clavicles and attached to the body by muscle-muscle connections along the shoulder blades. The longitudinal ridge on the outer surface of the scapula was observed to serve as an attach point for the powerful muscles of the chest and shoulder. The wolf's forelimbs separated easily from the trunk by slicing up from the chest and along the inside of the shoulder blade. Even separated from the body and with most of the muscle mass removed, the forelimbs continued to bend and fold as they would in life. The joint connecting the glenoid cavity of the scapula and the head of the humerus was heavy and thickly banded with tendon, and could not be severed even after several attempts.
Rear appendages in mammals are attached to the axial
skeleton via a joint at the pelvic girdle.
These joints were
observed to be ball-and-socket joints between the head of the
femur and a smooth socket in the pelvis (the acetabulum), and
were also heavily braced with tendons. After the heavy muscle
mass of the haunch (biceps femoris, glutei, tensor fascia lata)
was removed, a scalpel could be inserted at the edge of the socket and force applied; a sucking sound
indicated the induction of air into the joint capsule and the limb would come loose. Tracing the
scalpel around the head of the femur brought the tendons out of play and the hindlimb would come
free at the hip; it bent freely and autonomously like the forelimbs. The inside of the acetabulum and
the femur head were lined with cartilage -- very smooth and moist and
pale pink, covered with a slick, translucent white membrane.
The carcass, limbless and now weighing approximately 30-40
pounds, was turned on its back and an incision was made through the
abdominal muscles along the midline. The peritoneum was exposed,
covered with another membrane, which, when punctured, revealed that
evisceration should have taken place about two days previously.
Despite the appalling smell, the internal organs seemed relatively fresh
and firm, and packed tightly and smoothly around one another. The
intestines were soft, pink, thin-sided, segmented and thickly-coiled,
twined around yellow globules (mesentery). Numerous adhesions were
observed, both between lengths of intestine and between the intestine
and the body wall. It was not possible to cut the bowels out as a length
and they were eventually scooped out in sections into a waiting
receptacle. The stomach presented as a wider section of intestine at the
top of the pile, with muscular sphincters at both ends and a thick mucus
coating on its convoluted interior; there were no observed contents.
The liver was large (2-3 pounds), dark red, and firm, although
decomposition had set in and the edges tended to crumble under pressure.
The organ was apparently homogeneous and sat on top of the coiled
intestines, right below the diaphragm, which was observed to be a thin sheet
of tough reddish membrane which separated the bowels from the
cardiopulmonary system. The liver was attached to the diaphragm by a
ligament (falciform ligament). The lungs were dark grey-pink and limp but
not bloody, approximately .5 pound apiece, and the heart was dark red,
surrounded by an outer (pericardial) and inner (epicardial) membrane, and
about 200 cubic cm. The lungs and heart nestled tightly in a compact space,
with a small space between the heart and its membrane to facilitate motion
of the cardiac muscle. The internal organs had to be cut away from the
ventral side of the body cavity to be removed; the oesophagus also had to be
severed to remove the lungs. The oesophagus was a thick-walled pink tube
about 2 cm in diameter, ringed with bands of cartilage approximately .5 cm
wide, and was empty, smooth and flexible upon observation.
There were presumably kidneys, but insufficient effort was made to locate them and other
organs such as the pancreas. The bladder was of course located with an accidental movement of the
scalpel, and the result actually improved the odor factor somewhat. The blood supply to the internal
organs (inferior vena cava, descending aorta, mesenteric artery) ran tightly bound along the interior
midline, just ventral to the spinal cord.
After removal of the viscera, it was necessary to section the spine into pieces small enough
to fit in the cooker, a huge sheet-metal contraption containing a wire grid and a vast amount of hot
water and/or ammonia, which heat-denatures the muscle fibres and removes the remaining meat from
the bones. In theory, sectioning is accomplished by placing a knife between two vertebrae and
jabbing sharply downward, slicing the cartilage pads between the vertebrae apart and severing the
spine, but in practise the wolf's spinal cord is extremely well-protected by a number of vertebral
projections and it was necessary to have someone else section the animal, which was then placed in
the cooker for approximately five days. Meat was left on the head and neck, and fur was left on the
face and feet.
Removal of the wolf bones from the cooker was accomplished by hand. The bones lay on a wire grid under perhaps a foot of greasy brown water, in which meat, hair, and various unremoved organs floated. They were sorted by hand and dumped into a tub to be cleaned. The tongue and parts of the face were found at the bottom of the cooker, as were pieces of the feet. The feet, which had been left undissected, came apart in the cooker, and it could now be seen that the bones of the toes terminated in a joint with the claws, which bent upward, so that the weight rested on a joint rather than on the terminal of a digit. The joints rested in pawpads, which appeared to consist of thick, grainy skin enclosing a liquid-filled capsule much like the one which protected the olecranon. The main (plantar) pawpad supported the joint between the shaft of the limb and the toes.