Eighty Percent of All Shrunken Heads are Fakes

Abstract

Shrunken heads, I hate you. Traders who traffic in heads, I hate you. Ditto museums and private collections, ditto Meg Simpkins who wrote the article, ditto my greedy eyes devouring the page. For drama I flash five fingers five times—universal hand talk for twenty-five dollars, the going price in 1930. Back then you paid in cash or traded a gun. On page three, I learn that even shrunken heads have an order. One, remove skull and jaw aspect. Two, boil skin in tannic acid aspect. Three, re-shape over a steel ball, smudge with ashes for color, and place a seed under each eye. This is a combined aspect. There are other aspects, like sew the eyes shut, then the mouth, so that you can be 79% safe from unleashed spirits of the dead.