The Knee Bone's Connected to the Shin Bone.....

From The Washington Post comes this story of bones, and not just the canine variety. It seems that osteology professor Gordon S. "Grover" Krantz donated his skeleton and those of three of his beloved dogs to the Smithsonian. His dying wish was that these skeletons be put on display. "It was an outlandish wish," admits his wife Diane Horton. "He wanted his bones someplace. . . He thought he would be a good teaching specimen."

Krantz died of cancer at the age of 70, seven years ago. Before he died, the Smithsonian agreed to take his bones but had warned him that re-assembling them, would be a "long shot." Before the bones of Krantz and his Irish wolfhound Clyde arrived at the Smithsonian in 2003, they had been cleaned at the University of Tennessee. The bones of two more of his dogs were already there in storage, which is where they presumably would have stayed.

Except that the Museum was opening an exhibit called "Written in Bone" about Colonial-era grave sites in the Chesapeake region. Museum forensic anthropologist Doug Owsely decided that reassembling the skeleton of Krantz and his dog, Clyde, would be a fabulous ending exhibit that would certainly give museum goers something to talk about as they were leaving.

The task of reassembling the skeletons fell to Paul Rhymer, the museum's taxidermist. It took him several months to complete the project using power tools to drill tiny holes in the bones and thin wire to join them together. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle, only doubled.

Rhymer began with Krantz' spine and worked his way out. Along the way, he discovered that all the bones did fit together in a logical way. In other words, it would have been impossible for him to put the vertebrae together except the way they were supposed to go.

Krantz and his dog are facing each other, the dog Clyde standing on his hind legs and Krantz is cradling his front legs in his arms. According to visitors, the pair is indeed a striking visual. Krantz, who harbored a life long love of bones (and taught the study of them, osteology at Washington State University) would have been extremely pleased.