Chicken Mummification Part 2 (a.k.a. Nkuku Part Ew!)

It was finally time to pull Nkuku (see "Chicken Mummification") out of the garage and see what is happening in the mummification process. Casia was very excited but I was a little apprehensive and not sure what would be waiting for us. I'd been in the garage a few times, and detected no foul stench wafting over from his corner, so I was sort of hopeful that this wouldn't be a painful olfactory experience.

An excited Casia in her rubber gloves.

It was a beautiful fall day, which was lucky because this was definitely an outdoor activity. We spread some newspaper out and gathered our supplies: scale, rubber gloves, garbage bag, salt, spice mixture and replacement bags. Then we brought out Nkuku. Casia began her observations even before she opened the air-tight bucket. She sniffed and detected no odor. Then she open the lid. Carefully, she eased her nose towards the bucket until she had her head right over it and still, she gave it the thumbs up for no malodorous whiff. So with great anticipation she heaved the heavy bag from the container and placed it on the newspaper. 

This is Casia giving the 'thumbs-up' indicating it doesn't stink. Unfortunately, the gloves are a few sizes too big for her to make that gesture.

"It's all sloshy!" she declared. And so it was. I could see the vast amount of liquid pooled at the bottom of the bag, filling several inches. She set it down and I immediately realized I needed to add another tool to our list of supplies. We needed scissors. There was no way I was going to try to open the knotted end of that bag with so much liquid inside. So after I ran to get some scissors, I had Casia cut open the bag. When she got to the third bag, she threw her head to the side to try and take in a fresh breath of air. "It smells!" she yelled as she cringed away from the chicken.  

There are about four inches of liquid in the bag.

Now I've take my share of biology and anatomy classes and have had the opportunity to dissect frogs, a cat, a pig's alimentary canal and various other animals and animal parts, and I can honestly say, the smell emanating from Nkuku was not the worst I'd ever breathed, but it was still pretty stinky! 

Casia pulled the chicken from the bags and laid him on the newspaper and we threw out the bags with the liquid. She then proceeded to wipe off as much salt and residue as she could. She was able to get rid of most of it. I had to pry open his back end because she didn't have the strength and his body was very rigid. Casia then stuck her hand inside and wiped out the salt. When he was as clean as we could get him, we weighed him on the scale and found that he weighed about 4.5 lbs; down from 6 lbs. at our last weighing. 

Cleaning the salt from Nkuku. He was a little stiff and a lot stinky.

We then placed Nkuku into the new grocery-sized bag and I pried him open so Casia could dump a 15 oz. can of salt into him. She poured a second container around him in the bag. Then I pushed as much air out of the bag as possible and knotted the bag closed. I placed it inside another bag, tied it, and repeated.  Nkuku was now ready to re-enter his temporary resting place in the air-tight bucket.  

It has been a smelly project so far, but not as bad as I had expected; although, I might add, it was worse than Casia had expected. We will pull him out again in a couple more weeks to check on the his progress in this mummification experiment.