Many people say that the strangest thing you will ever find in a taxidermist’s shop is an animal that has been skinned, dried, and draped on wire.
Image Credit: Kody Birdy
They are wrong. The strangest thing you will ever find is a customer. This is why I couldn’t ever follow in the footsteps of my father and grandfather. Don’t misunderstand me, I have a great amount of respect for what my family does, even respect for the people that ask my family to do what they do. The discipline, from a technical perspective, is really something and requires a strong understanding of both physics and fabrication. But once you get the reputation for being judgy, most of your clientele go out the door to the big city and I wasn’t raised to be poor.
Hunters aren’t that difficult to be around you might say, but actually, the bread and butter of the profession is much smaller. It’s easy to discuss the elements of a job with a man who's been away from his wife for three days, nabbed a fat one, and has enough venison jerky being processed to take care of all his gifts for the next year. But what about the person who accidentally sat on their gerbil and thinks they should start their next life out wearing MC Hammer pants?
My father is a patient man, but I am not and knew I would have to find another profession the day a man rode up on a scooter with a raccoon full of buckshot and the request to make it look skinny and penitent. After two years' war on his bins, it seemed that this was the victory parade. If you control your facial features and tone of voice you can make a good living. I can thank that raccoon and the half dozen ensuing mice arranged a la the orphans singing “it’s a hard knock life” from Annie for my nice straight teeth and my grandmother’s updated kitchen came mostly from cat ladies who figured that a stuffed cat on the hearth is only ten percent less alive than snowball was in her sleepy prime.
Still, I cannot contend with the bright flicker of strangeness behind the eyes of those who would wish to outsource Dr. Frankenstein’s cousin’s unholy work and for this reason, I think I would make an excellent junior associate at this firm.
Thanks to Jenny Lawson for planting the seed of dead raccoons with the book, Furiously Happy.
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