We found a dead grass snake on holiday in the Cotswolds and I obviously couldn’t resist bagging it up and bringing it home. A week later we attempted to remove the skin and preserve it, based on little more than a couple of Reddit explainer threads.
Apparently the technique is to start by cutting the skin all the way down the belly. First attempt was with Stanley knife, which turned out to be an awful tool for the job. We switched to gardening scissors which were incredibly perfect for the job.
The week-dead snake was beginning to smell and it was at this point the whole exercise seemed a bad idea. And this was before we removed the guts.
Next the flesh and backbone. This looked like it was going to be a nightmare job as it appeared we’d need to carefully snip away sinew by sinew along the whole length…
But after a minor struggle to separate one end of the meat from the skin, it blossomed into one of the top 5 most satisfying moments of my life so far!
The remaining skin needed just a touch more trimming, then… one beautiful snake skin ready for preserving. The whole exercise was really fascinating and enjoyable, and the careful focus meant we completely distracted ourselves from smell which seemed to disappear. I’ll follow up with another post when that process is finished.
