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      DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — The steel building where Allen Edberg works
on furs is lit by only two light bulbs dangling on long cords from
the ceiling. When you enter on a bright winter day, you will need
to pause to let your eyes adjust.


      Edberg, a trapper, is at his table, working on a beaver hide. He
puts it down and walks to a large chest freezer in one corner of
the dirt-floored room.


      "They're in here," says Edberg, 47, of Fredenberg Township
north of Duluth.


      Oh, yes, they are. Edberg lifts the lid of the freezer, which is
unplugged and not freezing anything. In the bottom of the freezer
lies a deer skull with a nice set of antlers attached. Crawling all
over the white bone of the skull are beetles. Dermestid beetles.
Hungry dermestid beetles that are eating any remaining flesh on the
deer skull.


      "I just got 'em this last summer," Edberg says.


      He bought the beetles for exactly this purpose, to clean the
skulls of deer for European mounts, a form of deer mount that has
become popular with Minnesota hunters. In a European mount, the
antlers and skull remain intact, mounted as one. The mounts are
more economical than the traditional "shoulder" mounts done by
taxidermists in which the antlers are mounted on the head and cape
of the deer.


      "It went a little nuts," Edberg says. "I'm backed up like you
can't believe."


      Edberg's beetles are busy. They crawl up the buck's nostrils,
trundle along the buck's teeth, creep in and out of the buck's eye
sockets.


      A few of the beetles are adults, but most are larvae
representing several beetle generations. Itty-bitty beetles 1/16th
of an inch long. Larger larvae a quarter-inch long. Adults up to
half an inch long.


      The bottom of the freezer is littered with the discarded
exoskeletons of growing larvae, which resemble smallish husks of
sunflower seeds. Edberg keeps the freezer at an un-freezer-like 80
degrees.


      A beetle lives about 30 days, Edberg says, laying eggs every two
to four days. It is the larvae of young beetles that do most of the
flesh-eating work, he says.

      The beetles can clean up a deer skull in about a day and a half,
Edberg says. He finishes it by applying a paste of hydrogen
peroxide. He charges $55 for a European mount. The average price of
a shoulder mount is about $525, said Randy Bowe of Bowe Taxidermy
in Duluth.


      Bowe charges $95 for both European mounts and standard
antler-on-a-plaque mounts, he said. European mounts are a matter of
taste, he said.


      "Some people say, I don't want a skull in my house.' Some
people really like them," Bowe said. "They're something new on
the market. They're getting more popular."


      For a true trophy buck, most hunters still prefer a shoulder
mount, he said.


      Bowe doesn't use beetles to clean his skulls for European
mounts, he said.


      "I haven't invested in the beetles," Bowe said. "I don't want
them in my shop. I boil and bleach."


      Edberg ordered a starter kit of dermestid beetles from Montana
last summer. The kit, with one starter colony of insects, cost
about $400, he said. He fed them beaver skulls, bobcat skulls, mink
and muskrat skulls. Edberg has access to plenty of skulls.


      "Once they were eating up to a quarter-pound a day, I could put
a (deer) head in there," he said.


      Clearly, if your olfactory system is working properly, you can
detect one downside of hanging out near a colony of dermestid
beetles at work.


      That aroma, and having to feed the beetles during the
off-season, is too great an inconvenience for many who do European
mounts. But if you search Google for "dermestid beetles," you'll
find that it's a healthy industry.


      The dermestid family of beetles, widespread native to the United
States, also are used by museums to clean skulls for display. They
are used in forensics because the arrival of dermestid beetles can
indicate how long an organism has been dead.


      Edberg isn't sure how many European mounts he has done for
hunters.


      He understands the appeal of European mounts.


      "I've got mounts in the house, too," he says, "but how many
can you afford to do?"

      While Edberg fleshes and stretches hides that he and others have
trapped, his beetles chew silently in the freezer. Edberg has
assigned them not only buck skulls, but bear skulls, an alligator
skull, muskrat skulls and skunk skulls.


      "I'm doing a wolf skull for the Lake Superior Zoo," he said.

      Edberg isn't sure how many beetles he has now.


      "Thousands," he says. "I'll probably break them up into four
or five colonies this summer."

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Allen Edberg bought flesh-eating beetles to clean the skulls of deer for European mounts, a form of deer mount that has become popular with Minnesota hunters. In a European mount, the antlers and skull remain intact, mounted as one.

Flesh-eating beetles clean up on European mounts

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