Owls!

[themountie.livejournal.com]

Dr. Hodgins Jack,

I can't apologize enough for the lateness of this owl. I'm afraid I have no excuse, save that Hogwarts appears to make one extremely scatterbrained and in the chaos of the last few weeks I seem to have let a few of my marbles slip.

At any rate, do you still have any interest in the experiment we discussed at your Sorting? The House Elves assure me that should we need a pig they can provide one or even several for our purposes.

Sincerely,
Constable Benton Fraser



Lily,

Your friend Dr. Cox asked me to look into a certain matter for him. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions? Nothing too dramatic, I promise.

Ben



Phil,

I hope I'm not intruding, but I couldn't help but notice that you appeared to be in somewhat of a state during Professor Evans' Defense Against the Dark Arts class the other day.

I realize that you and I are not particularly close, but I thought I would offer my services, in case you need... well, any help. I know this kind of thing can be difficult to get through alone. Believe me, you don't have to be. Very often, the first step to helping yourself is admitting that you need help.

Sincerely,
Constable Benton Fraser

Attached to the note are several helpful pamphlets.

Comments

Return owl, not warded

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

Constable Benton Benny-boy Fraser What the hell should I call you?

Of course I remember! As it turns out, I left a pig out in the forest a couple of weeks ago to give you the chance to see multiple insect seres. However, a fresh one (as in, less than a day of exposure) would be good for some contrast. I'll get to working on that whenever it's convenient for you.

-Jack

Return owl, not warded

[themountie.livejournal.com]

Jack,

Excellent! I'm working on a case at the moment, but my shift ends at 5 and it's not urgent. I'll swing by the kitchen to collect the new pig; shall we say 5:30?

And you're welcome to call me whatever makes you feel most comfortable. Most people seem to prefer my last name.

Sincerely,
Constable Benton Fraser

Return owl, not warded

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

Fraser,

I'll be out there. I left the first pig well into the woods to avoid offending wandering students. Bring a notebook, a garbage bag, and some Vicks if you're the delicate type.

-Jack

Enclosed is a crudely drawn map of the grounds, with a cartoony pig with X's for eyes among a squiggle that may or may not represent the Forbidden Forest.

[themountie.livejournal.com]

True to his word, as soon as his self-proclaimed shift ended, Fraser went back to his room to change (because getting rotten pig on the serge would hardly be appropriate!), collected a freshly-killed pig from the House Elves, and set off for the Forbidden Forest with his notebook and said pig in the requested bag tucked under his arm.

The map wasn't incredibly helpful, but Fraser knew the Forest relatively well by now. Besides, with a project like this, it wasn't hard to follow his nose. After a few minutes' trek, he spotted Hodgins ahead. "Jack!" he called, holding up the pig.

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

Hodgins was crouched a few feet away from the stinking pig carcass (now only vaguely pig-like in shape with parts of the skeleton poking through in several places) removing equipment from his backpack. He looked up at the call and waved. "Hey, Fraser! Come on over and greet Fluffy."

[themountie.livejournal.com]

"Hello, Fluffy," Fraser greeted the corpse blandly, expressionless. He set his own bag down nearby and crouched down by Hodgins, only the slightest flicker crossing his face as the odor of decay hit him full-on.

He'd smelled worse. Really.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" he offered, nodding towards the pack.

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

"We'll call that one Stinky," he said, pointing at the pig-in-bag that Frasier has just set down. "Anyway, hold these." He held out a couple of small bug nets with one hand and continued to remove a series of small plastic jars, glue traps, clothespins, and a thermometer from the bag. "We'll need those in just a second, since the mobile evidence is going to be the first to be disrupted by us."

[themountie.livejournal.com]

If there was one thing Fraser was good at, it was sniffing things jumping off of roofs taking orders. He took the nets from Hodgins and laid them atop the notebook that rested on his knee, watching with keen interest as the various pieces of equipment came out. He hadn't been lying when he'd said that this sort of thing fascinated him! His field education had been incredibly limited when it came to this kind of thing -- nearly all his scientific knowledge came from books. And all his practical knowledge came from the Inuit, who didn't hold much for keeping bugs around.

"The mobile evidence being the insects?" he guessed, his eyes wandering over to Fluffy. Who was, indeed, rotted. And teeming. Excellent. And Fraser was probably one of the only two people in the entire school who would have those particular thoughts, in that particular sequence. But there you were.

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

"Bingo. So what we do is we catch a few flies, a few beetles--whatever's handy at this state of decomposition. And we put them in one of these jars." He holds out a small vial about half-full with a clear liquid. "It kills and preserves them so we can make a definitive identification later. Also, I'm going to be putting up these traps." He held up the flypaper, which had been folded into a vaguely tent-like shape, sticky side out. "See, what you do is you put the clothespins on each corner like so, and then when you put it on the ground it's at a good height to catch things. Once we get that out of the way, we can get down to the business of the actual carcass colonization. Another thing--these are pigs, so they're carcasses. Some people get twitchy when you call a dead animal a corpse. We try to impart as much dignity to the deceased as we can when they're human, even if that's just differentiating them from your garden variety dead not-human."

[themountie.livejournal.com]

Fraser listened. No, really; he listened like some people breathed, and he soaked up information like a sponge. "Of course," he agreed with a small, lopsided smile. "I've found myself that people rarely like to be compared to animals."

He took a strip of flypaper and started to attach the clothespins when he was stopped by the sight of the bug nets he'd been holding for Hodgins. He held one up curiously. "What do we do with these?"

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you never caught butterflies as a kid? It's pretty much the same principle, look." He took one, waved it a few feet in front of him, wrapped part of it around his hand to trap the contents, and held it out to him. Inside, several flies were buzzing angrily. "See? You put them in jars and preserve them now. Try it."

[themountie.livejournal.com]

A furrow creased Fraser's brow. "Well... no. Not to my recollection, anyway." Was that something children often did? He hadn't had a very normal childhood. "We do have butterflies up in the Yukon, of course, but I don't remember ever trying to catch them. What purpose would that serve? To a child, I mean -- I certainly understand the purpose here."

As if to demonstrate that he did, in fact, understand, he picked up another of the nets and with one quick wave had a bundle of angrily buzzing flies in hand. He held it up to his face, peering at it with wide, curious eyes. "Ah." A strange smile quirked his lips. "Never mind, I think I understand."

He held out his net to Hodgins. "These are to be used in conjunction with the fly paper, then?"

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

Hodgins stared at Fraser for a few seconds with that "What the hell is wrong with you" look that was usually reserved for Zach. "Well, you look at them. You marvel at their tiny flying arthropod beauty, or you identify the species, or--look, it's a perfectly normal kid thing." He grinned to see Fraser getting the hang if it, though. "Yeah, just like that. The fly paper's more for beetles, honestly. Beetles, spiders, grasshoppers--even the ones that don't feed on the carcass can be crucial evidence."

[themountie.livejournal.com]

The words 'then why do they call it fly paper' were visibly lining themselves up on Fraser's tongue. He squinted at the paper strip, at the bug netting, opened his mouth to ask them... and decided to let it drop. The one bug-eyed (so to speak) stare was enough for one day, he thought. He settled for a quick smile and an "Ah. So it is."

Reaching back behind him, he grabbed for the bag containing Stinky. "And our, ah, new friend here? What will we be doing with him?"

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

"He's our control, so to speak. See, we leave him a little bit away. Over by that tree maybe." He pointed to one about thirty feet away, give or take. "Close enough that we can see him, but far enough out that he won't be immediately colonized by Fluffy's former pals. They'll probably be the ones to get there first. The ones that like fresh meat, anyway. See, some flies like fresly killed food, some like to wait until it's been tenderized a little. Or has openings leading to the gooey insides. Lemme give you a hand with that, Stinky's got to be heavy."

[themountie.livejournal.com]

Fraser had paused to listen to the explanation, but now he shook his head and waved Hodgins off with a smile. "Not at all." He hefted the carcass and stood, heading for the tree. "You know, I once tracked a suspect over 1700 kilometers of terrain, and I finally managed to corner him at the base of a waterfall up near Nunavut. But the problem was, you see, that all of the people involved in the case, that is everyone who could identify him, were back up by the outpost I'd started from. We weren't particularly close to any roads, and I didn't have any transport of my own, as I'd had to keep silent..." He set the pig down and grinned back at Hodgins. "It was an interesting journey."

Returning, he crouched back down by the older carcass and reached for another fly net. "To say nothing of hunting caribou, which of course requires a great deal of heavy lifting."

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

"Oh." Hodgins stared at Fraser for a while, trying to make sense of the story. The gist of it seemed to be that he could carry a pig with no assistance, so that was okay. "I could have helped though. Just so you know. I'm just as capable of carrying a dead pig as the next guy."

Defense of his masculinity attempted, Hodgins turned back to his equipment and the carcass. "Also, you always have to label your samples. Use as much detail as you can fit on the label, because they will question the shit out of you in court and try to trip you up. But as law enforcement, you probably know that. Want to move on to the maggots?"

[themountie.livejournal.com]

Fraser hadn't realized that Hodgins felt the need to defend his masculinity in the first place, so the look he gave him was slightly blank. "I never thought for a moment you weren't." And what might have been snarky and patronizing on anyone else was really very sincere on Fraser. He just tended to assume that people could do the things he could. He sometimes found himself unduly surprised when they couldn't just leap over walls or the like.

He sat back down, cross-legged, looking quite excited. "Oh, yes. Tell me about the maggots."

Again, it should be noted that he was being completely serious. Really.

[buggy-genius.livejournal.com]

"Oh. Good." Hodgins shrugged off the whole thing, satisfied. "Once you've collected the flies and beetles, you put them in these 'killing jars,' the ones with cottonballs soaked in ethyl acetate, you can start on the maggots. First, you have to note where the maggot mass is concentrated. You expect them in natural orifices, but they also tend to cluster in open wounds--stabs, gunshots, that sort of thing. Then, you look for eggs and cast-off pupae. Once you find the pupa casings, you know that the remains have been available for colonization for more than a day. Then, you collect the maggots. You'll be dividing them into thirds, basically: one-third goes in preservatives, one-third go in kill jars, and the last third you'll keep and rear to adulthood. Basically, you're tripling your chances of not screwing up the identification process. Still following?"