The Ibex of Arth Goldau

I promised you a funny story which happened in the wild life park in Arth Goldau. There I got one of my most impressive skulls. I think this is the weirdest story of all my “skull tales” so far. But please, read more under the cut.

It happened long time ago, about eleven years (or thirteen years? I feel so old right now!). Well, I was quite young and started with my first job. Corni, a good friend of mine, and I went to this park during our vacation. Like in every park there was a souvenir shop and there it saw it, a skull of an ibex with giant horns!

Hello thar, I'm not for sale!

It was practically smiling at me and I was immediately fascinated by this skull. I looked, no, stared at it and was looking for the price. But there wasn’t a price tag at all, so I asked the shop keeper lady. Unfortunately she didn`t knew the price either. I think she never expected someone wanting to buy this ibex skull. So she went to ask another park member.

Five hundred bucks. Yeah, that was expensive for someone who just started to work. I was torn to buy that ibex skull, but what would my parents say? So we went to the next phone box, calling my parents. My dad picked up the phone. He was a bit distracted, but he said something very special to me: “If you think it`s worth it, then buy it”.

The horns are about 90cm long.

So we leaved the wild life park with that massive ibex skull. The people looked very dumbfounded, because we had to walk through half the village to the train station. Over there it didn’t get any better. I was lucky that the train had big doors, because the horns of the ibex were so cantilevered, gosh! And of course it was rush hour, so we almost didn’t have enough space in there for ourselves xD

Not alone, Kudu is hanging with me.

A bus ride later I finally came to my home. The skull was very heavy and bulky so I wasn’t able to open the door. I used the bell. My Mum opened and was very surprised to see me with those horns xD
Now the impressive ibex hangs on the wall in my sleeping room in company of some kudu horns.

It was very funny (but also heavy!) to bring the ibex to its new home. People smiled at me, stared in confusion or were just surprised. I can’t blame them – I guess you don’t see a lanky girl carrying a huge ibex skull every day.

See ya!