Mark Holmgren, 37 lost the use of his right arm in a bike accident in 1999, but for the last 20 years he refused to have the arm amputated — he was probably just attached to it…

In April, however, Holmgren changed his mind and had his arm amputated — and he then asked doctors if he could keep it.  To our surprise they said yes as Holmgren walked out of the hospital with it in a trash bag.

Holmgren kept his arm in his freezer for about a month before he finally figured out what he wanted to do with it. He eventually decided he wanted to keep his preserved arm as a souvenir.

So he called around to a number of taxidermy specialists asking if they would preserve a human arm. Understandably, most of them said no.

Eventually, Holmgren found a taxidermist who was willing to preserve his arm. Turns out, preserving a human arm isn’t easy. We’re sure no one has perfected the concept… so they decided to preserve it in its skeletal form.

How do you do that? With flesh eating beetles. Ew. The taxidermist let the insects chow down on the arm’s flesh until there was nothing but bone left. The taxidermist just had to put the arm and hand bones back together and voila — a mantle piece no one asked for.