creepiest goddamn thing that ever happened to me

unidentified skeleton hanging outside creepy shed in LA hills
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

This is not bullshit. For our anniversary, Mrs. Lorrimer and I went on a hike in the LA hills. We ended up, as we often do, on some underutilized trail that may not really be a trail, way up in the hills along some creek. Eventually we passed by a couple of creepy old brick fireplace chimney things -- we checked them out and made some cheesy jokes about the Blair Witch Project. Then we went a little further and came to this shed -- it's very broken down and covered with graffiti, and there is A MOTHERFUCKING SKELETON hanging outside it. We didn't get all that close -- it was seriously creepy -- but I snapped this photo with my cellphone. It's about four feet tall, and it's very unclear what kind of creature it once was. We told each other it must be a goat or a pig, but we were both really scared that it was a human child. We turned around at that point (duh) and eventually got back to the main part of the park and told a ranger. He thought there had been a turkey vulture skeleton hanging outside of a shed up in there somewhere, and maybe that's what this was. But it was pretty fucking bulky to be a bird. I honestly don't know. Then it also turns out that that shed is known as "German Camp" because in the 1940s there was a group of Nazis hiding out there (or Nazi sympathizers or something, I'm not sure what he meant), and that there's been a group of teenagers around killing animals and shooting BB guns at hikers.

I mean, it must have been a turkey vulture. Right?

creepy skeleton cropped and sharpened
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

cropped and sharpened image of the skeleton

UPDATED: Okay, I think this explains it. Found the image below with a google search, and a close look at the sharpened photo below makes it pretty clear that it was actually a turkey vulture. I didn't realize those things were so goddamn big. The head is actually fairly clear in the sharpened photo, but I definitely did not identify that as a skull when I was looking at it in person -- it looked like the top part was all slumped back. I must have thought the skull was part of the ribcage. I feel a little better now.

Actual turkey vulture skeleton
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

UPDATED AGAIN: Okay, wikipedia says that turkey vultures have an average wingspan of two meters, which is like six and a half feet. Fair enough. None of this tells us why someone hung a turkey vulture skeleton outside a creepy shed in the LA hills, but better that than some kind of ritual human sacrifice.