From roadkill to Scotland
Jerielle Cartales excavates the skull of a raccoon (also pictured) during a practice archaeology activity with students. Cartales is a forensic anthropology instructor at Western Oregon University. / Submitted photo
The path taken by one forensic anthropologist
Jerielle Cartales enjoys solving puzzles, watching a good mystery on TV, and intently studying roadkill as it decomposes in the family garden.
Of course, one must first find roadkill before one can watch it decompose.
“My brother would go out and, like, walk around and find roadkill for me. And then we would go and collect it,” said Cartales.
Then they would dispose of it in a sectioned off part of the family garden.
“At one point we had Wile E. Coyote and Rocket the Raccoon in a chicken wire cage (she and her brother) built; they called the structure the ‘Nicholas death Cage’,” stated her father, Jon Raibley, Ed.D.
Even the family pet contributed. A dead raccoon was found by her dog while Cartales and her husband were visiting his grandmother.
“Grandma told her she could keep it. So Jerielle called us, starting the conversation with ‘how much do you love me?’ Then asking if she could keep it in our freezer until she could transport it to school,” stated Raibley. “The answer was ‘lots,’ and ‘yes, if you triple bag it and mark it ‘not to be eaten’.”
Little did Raibley know at the time that he and his wife were raising a budding scientist.
“I probably wouldn’t have guessed forensic anthropology as her career choice,” he said of his daughter, the future Western Oregon instructor. “But she’s always liked figuring out how things happen, and is interested in justice….I could also have seen her as an artist, actress, or author of mysteries.”
If not for the lure of a rotting carcass.
Roadkill not tucked away in the family freezer was left to decompose above ground. Turns out it was quite the conversation starter.
Jerielle Cartales excavates the skull of a raccoon (also pictured) during a practice archaeology activity with students. Cartales is a forensic anthropology instructor at Western Oregon University. / Submitted photo
“My dad would invite neighbors over. ‘Hey, you want to see something cool looking.’ And they would stand around it, looking at it,” said Cartales. “We were the strange family that lives on the block. And I was that weird kid that was always collecting roadkills.”
Most of the skeletonizing takes place on its own schedule. Just nature being nature. But there is a Plan B in place if a bone needs to be cleaned immediately.
“Just some gentle simmering in a pot,” explained Cartales. “I have a special bone pot because my partner does not like me using nice cookware. It’s just simmering with some soap to remove the grease. It’s a Goodwill, beat up, old thing.
Cartales was raised in Sherwood. Family outings might have contributed to her acceptance of things others might consider macabre.
From her father: “When Jerielle was young, we lived in an apartment, where the nearest green space was the cemetery across the street. My wife would take the kids to run in the unoccupied grass area. Jerielle claims this led to early interest in dead things.”
This interest in “dead things” was heightened when she took a high school forensic science course.
“One of the things we did (in class) was a decomposition activity, where the teacher asked families in the community for roadkill,” said Cartales.
Donations were set up behind the classroom. Students monitored the carcasses while they decomposed.
“You photograph fly activity, and you collect maggots for entomology students, and you upset everyone in the area with this very stinky raccoon,” said Cartales of the lesson.
So what’s a bone-simmering, maggot-counting, fly-photographing, college-bound student to do with herself? Turn to Dr. Temperance Brennan for career advice, of course.
Brennan was an investigative forensic anthropologist in ‘Bones’, the classic TV series.
“I never had to sit down and be like, what do I want to do with my life? I want to study anything that gets me closer to studying bones,” Cartales said. “And it wasn’t until ‘Bones’ came out that I had a name for it.”
Which helps explain why Cartales majored in biology and minored in forensic anthropology at Western Oregon.
“I contacted (Dr. Misty Weitzel) about a year after I graduated from college. It’s like, I would love to get some more experience in the field. Do you have anything for me? She said, come back. You can do inventory in the lab. So, I did,” said Cartales.
For one year, Cartales did such things as record skeletal measurements while gaining experience in other skills basic to the field.
“And then (Weitzel) kicked me out and encouraged me to apply to grad school,” said Cartales, who later earned her Master’s degree at prestigious University of Dundee in Scotland.
Highly regarded, the University of Dundee is home to the leading juvenile osteology programs in the world.
“Getting to learn from pretty much the best people in the field is really cool,” said Cartales. “And, also, it’s Scotland. Like, who doesn’t want to go to Scotland?”
With a Master’s degree in hand, Cartales returned to Western Oregon in 2019 as a non-tenure track instructor in forensic anthropology. Weitzel is the only other forensic anthropologist at the university, and chairs its Criminal Justice Sciences Division.
“We see a lot of students with interest in forensic anthropology. Sometimes students are drawn to the ‘glamour’ of the discipline as seen in popular media and not necessarily ready to commit to the ‘reality’ of the discipline,” stated Weitzel. “Jerielle has an innate curiosity. She truly wants to understand how things work in forensic anthropology and she puts in the hard work to do so.”
This passion is reflected in her teaching.
“Jerielle has an infectious enthusiasm for forensic anthropology and working with students,” stated Weitzel. “She is a dynamic and innovative educator. Her interest in the topic is so genuinely sincere that she exudes a level of enthusiasm in all that she does, and it is not lost on our students.”
Cartales uses lab work, field study and educational games to teach her students. Her lectures are online and easy to access.
Bones collected in her youth now serve the needs of higher education. They are part of the department’s collection.
“These bones are mostly used for comparative anatomy,” explained Cartales. “We don’t have that big skeletal collection that a lot of the larger universities have. We get creative, and part of that is through animal remains. A femur changes slightly with different animals. They have slightly different structures. But a femur looks like a femur. If you can identify a pig femur as a femur, then you can identify a human femur as a femur.”
Animal bones and human bones react similarly to trauma. So she can show students actual signs of trauma healing, abnormal bone development and disease. One of her raccoons, for example, was cancerous at the time of its death.
Her family's support continues. They still do their part to add specimens to her collection.
“My family will text me pictures of bones, like, do you want this? What kind of animal is this from? I’m not a zoologist,” she said. “I don’t know what type of animal it is unless I see it with its flesh on.”
(Editor’s note: This article, since edited, originally appeared in the Polk County Itemizer-Observer.)
