What Does Free Cost?

I picked up a box of pheasant feathers from someone on Craigslist the other day. Excuse me, a box of whole pheasant wings. Still attached to skin. And Bones. With a layer of under-skin fat in tact. I don't think any steps were taken to preserve or de-pest these. What did I get myself into?

Seriously, what did I get myself into?

I am sitting in my bathroom, perched on the edge of the bathtub. There is a cardboard box of pheasant wings sitting in the tub. I am hoping that any crazy mites and bugs that might exist can be contained in this quarantined area. I am hoping to not see any maggots. Or spiders. These were stored in someone's garage for an indeterminate amount of time.

Forge ahead, forge ahead!

I try to carefully pry wings away from a belly covered with beautiful little red-brown feathers with blue tips. Or is it a back covered with beautiful little red-brown feathers with blue tips? Who am I? Crack! Rip! Pluck!

This is gruesome. Little bits of yellow-with-age fat cling to the shafts of the feathers and melt on my fingers. Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it. That's what soap is for. Oh god I want to scrub my skin with Ajax!

Feathers get separated into big, clear plastic bags. Categories include: big stiff feathers like Yankee Doodle might stick in his cap and call Macaroni; medium sized oh-my-god there are so many feathers, you're all just going in here; and baby-sized I'll strip all the downy feathers off the stem to hopefully get ride of microscopic mites, hey these are pretty cute!

What am I even going to do with all of these? Ideally I could somehow make money off of whatever I make out of them. Money will help ease the memory of my Dexter-like deeds.

Won't it?

Could you guess that these dainty specimens pressed against glass on a linen background had such a gruesome past?