DULUTH, Minn. — The steel building where Allen Edberg works on furs is lighted by only two light bulbs dangling on long cords from the ceiling.

Edberg, a trapper, is at his table, working on a beaver hide. He puts it down and walks to a large chest freezer in one corner of the dirt-floored room.

“They’re in here,” says Edberg, 47, of Fredenberg Township north of Duluth.

Oh, yes, they are. Edberg lifts the lid of the freezer, which is unplugged. In the bottom of the freezer lies a deer skull with a nice set of antlers attached. Crawling all over the white bone of the skull are beetles. Dermestid beetles. Hungry dermestid beetles that are eating any remaining flesh on the deer skull.

He bought the beetle to clean the skulls of deer for European mounts, a form of mount in which the antlers and skull remain intact, mounted as one. The mounts are more economical than the traditional “shoulder” mounts.

A beetle lives about 30 days, Edberg says, laying eggs every two to four days. It is the larvae of young beetles that do most of the flesh-eating work, he says.

The beetles can clean up a deer skull in about a day and a half, Edberg said. He charges $55 for a European mount.