51�Թ�

It will skeletonize the leaves of plants and eat flowers such as roses.

The forensic-anthropology center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a similar policy, although it will occasionally “skeletonize” remains for institutions with which it has a relationship, like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Rarely do watch manufacturers skeletonize a sports watch’s mechanism.

It was the domain of the lab’s most prodigious workers: a colony of dermestids, flesh-eating beetles that are deployed to “skeletonize” bird and mammal carcasses, so the bones can be examined as evidence or added to the lab’s standards collection.

By the time I’m done with a book, most of my review of it is scrawled in the back pages, and, when I run out of space, on the front matter, curving around the colophon or the note on the type like a swarm of army ants on their way to skeletonize a baby deer.