The scalpel is raised, and an incision is made along the underbelly of the flesh. The knife slices sinuously down the leathery skin, leaving the red marks of a finely tuned hand, taking its time to make this project an artistic rendering of what its life was like.

The cutter smiled and put the needles into the flesh of the now skinless creature. The body was put in front of the fan to allow the corpse to dry, leaving its body in an eternal position.

Soon, it would be time for the beetles to strip the flesh. Their hunger was evident. The Bone Room collection would be nearly complete.

The scene described – though theatric – happens every day in the Bone Room.

Located on the second floor of Western’s Thompson North Wing, there sits a little room that has a diabolical sense of intrigue, morbid sights and some music from one-hit radio.

“Yeah, there’s some carnage in this place,” professor Steven Huskey said.

Huskey, an assistant biology professor, is in charge of the Bone Room and specializes in vertebrate form and function.

The Bone Room is where Huskey and his students analyze the skeletal structure of animals. Bear in mind, though, these animals are dead on arrival.

Huskey’s students know the animals inside and out. They skin and disembowel the specimens.

Next, they set the animals in natural positions with pins. Then, the animals are placed in front of a fan to dry. Wait for it- this is where it gets interesting.

After the bodies have dried, the pins are removed, and they are put into a tub full of flesh- eating beetles to finish stripping the meat off the bones.

One of Huskey’s lab workers is Jason Taylor, a graduate student from Edmonson County. Taylor, who was positioning a rattlesnake into a threatening striking position, has been working in the Bone Room for about two years.

“Sometimes, it takes longer to be creative in the positions than in the skinning,” Taylor said with a laugh.

Some people love it when they get in here, Taylor said.

“Then ya get the others, like me, who plan on having their own beetle colony after they graduate,” he said laughing.

The beetles, which are smaller than half a pinhead of a needle, occupy four clear plastic totes with cotton balls along the bottom to help collect waste. Taylor said that he estimates there are about 100,000 beetles in the totes.

The faint odor of ammonia, released from the beetles’ waste, wafted from the totes. The beetle colony was in the corner of the room next to the windows, where the ammonia smell could easily be ventilated.

Inside the tubs were various animals, each in their own separate state of decomposition, with some merely beginning to be eaten, while others resembled a Donner family reunion.

Huskey, who has been working with the beetle colony since his graduate school days, said that this beetle colony is the same one his graduate adviser used for his graduate degree. Not the same beetles, of course, but the same family.

“It took years of trial and error to get it down right,” he said, in reference to the method he employs to strip the animals.

In regard to the beetles, Huskey said that they’re the most effective way to preserve a skeleton upon death.

“They are the least destructive method of stripping the flesh, as they tend to leave it more intact than cooking or decomposition.”

People see the stripping process, and think that it’s cool, Huskey said. They want to try it, but they soon realize that the work is more than they are willing to do.

“To do it right, you have to understand the animals’ functional anatomy, which is how to feature its position, like it would be in the environment.”

He said it’s key to know how animals act in their natural environments, so a bird looks like a bird and not a fish.

In a moment that brought to mind Bear Grylls from the Discovery Channel, Huskey told the story of one of his most impressive catches – a 7 1/2-foot alligator.

“I hunted it, killed it, ate it and put its skeleton in the colony,” he said with a laugh. “I still have some of the skin in the freezer.”

The skeletons of the animals, he said, are shipped off to various universities and museums, such as the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium, The Bone Room in Berkeley, Calif., and Where on Earth? in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Scottsville senior Michelle Perry, sat in the Bone Room and discussed her experiences, including one sitting in front of her. On a tray in the middle of the table was a freshly skinned monitor lizard, who was freshly skinned. The lizard was looking up for guidance with its tongue sticking out, almost in a scene of morbid humor.

Perry, who recently joined Huskey’s disciplined lab group, said that she took Huskey’s form and function lab last spring, which introduced her to the discipline.

“We got to do some dissection, and I got this little bitty fish to do, and after that, I got hooked.”

She said that she did some work in Huskey’s lab during the summer with catfish that she caught.

“My little nephew loves looking at the catfish I did,” she said enthusiastically.

She said that even though she was new to the lab, Huskey was patient in showing her how to do things.

Huskey said it’s not uncommon for him to have a dozen students working in the lab every semester.

“There are some that get grossed out by this, but are amazed by the finished product,” he said. “Then, there are others that end up like me, who see road kill and are like ‘OOOHHH.’”

Reach Eric Isbell at features@chherald.com.