Whitetail Fever: Buck Stops Here V2.5

Greetings again from the Hunting Widow!
This week's theme is taxidermy, which can be so....limiting... to one's decor. After all, one can only do so much with a mount: turn the head left or right, up or down. Maybe string Christmas lights in the antlers for the holidays. When Chris was at sea, and the nights were long, I could swear that his goat used to look at me. And not in a nice way. So I put a sunbonnet on him to make him a little friendlier looking. That didn’t go over so well when the big guy came home. Anyway, just when we hunting widows have reached the end of the bottom of the inspiration barrel, along comes Gordon Wilding with some great displays to liven up the lodge

Vocabulary word of the week: crypto-taxidermy, which is the creation of stuffed animals that do not have real, live counterparts. For hunters, the most commonly seen type of crypto-taxidermy is the jackalope, which, you may be amazed to discover, actually has some basis in fact.

(There, you see, reading this blog is not the waste of time your spouse or employer is thinking -- it is EDUCATIONAL.) For more fun with crypto-taxidermy, visit the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. Be sure to try the Beast Blender. This is what happens when winters are long and dark.

“Probably, nobody will remember anything I've done when I'm gone, except the folks who brought me an old set of horns with which I created something beautiful.” In Find Something You Like To Do, Articman tells a great story about how he got into doing taxidermy.

Apparently taxidermy is an expanding field. Perhaps they can team up with a veterinarian -- their motto could be "No Matter What Happens - You Get Your Pet Back!" You have to wonder, too, what the new (living) pet that you bring home is thinking about that stuffed cat in the corner. Makes me think of the naughty parrot joke.

Haven’t gotten a buck worth mounting yet? Never fear, the mass merchandisers of America have brought you Buck, the Singing Deer. And if you didn’t see him at Christmas, then you don’t shop at Walmart. Be sure to turn on your audio.

Taxidermy figured into one of the best (and unintentional) practical jokes Chris and I have ever pulled.

It all started back in 1981, the summer after my junior year in high school. I signed up for an anatomy class at the local community college, including anatomy. The class included dissection of various animals, including cats. The professor needed a volunteer to skin the cats in preparation for dissection, so I took on the job. Being curious, I checked out a book on taxidermy from the library and decided to try it out on a couple of the cat skins. (Yes, I know, most teenage girls have other things on their mind for summer vacation. Yes, I’ve always been this way.) Having been soaked in formaldehyde, the skins came out a little stiff but were presentable. I even lined the best one with felt and hung it up.

Fast forward to 1988. I’m in the Coast Guard, married to a Coastie, and newly transferred to Headquarters. And we had this cat…..it had seemed like such a nice cat when we got it. As the weeks progressed though, this cat became increasingly cold to us. If we entered the room, it left. If we tried to pet it, it walked away. Not only that, but the ghost in the house didn’t like it and started throwing things at it. (No, we did not believe in ghosts until it happened to us, and besides that is a completely different story.) We had a long list of charges against that cat and it did absolutely nothing to otherwise endear itself to us.

Chris would go into work each Monday and regale his co-workers with the latest outrages the cat had committed. He started offering it for sale at our cost, but each week the price went up – first it was the adoption fee, then it was the vaccinations, and then the cat got sick. Chris’ griping about that cat made for great office entertainment.

Meanwhile, we were unpacking the last of a few boxes that had been unopened since before we were married. As I unloaded a book box, from behind me I heard Chris say, “WHAT is THIS?!?” I turned to find him holding the cat skin. As I explained the provenance of the skin, a light began to gleam in his eye (Chris, not the cat.) What better way to bring the weekly cat gripe to a head than to bring in a skin? We figured everyone would have a good laugh and move on.

Monday morning: Not everybody is laughing. Chris called me mid-morning to tell me that everyone was actually believing that this was the hide of the cat, and that his boss was furious with him.

Chris had come into the office he shared with a Lieutenant (Paul) and a Gunnersmate, poured his coffee, retrieved the cat skin from his briefcase and hung it from the bookcase over his desk. His nearest neighbor, Paul, asked him what that was:

Chris: I’d had it with that cat, so I killed it and skinned it.

Paul: Wow. What did Kim say?

Chris: Oh, you can’t say anything to Kim about it. I did it while she was out shopping with her mother and I told her it ran away.

(Crowd gathers, Chris repeats his story. General reactions run along the lines of “what if your wife finds out?” Then, enter the Commander (Butch), everyone’s boss.)

Butch: What’s that?

Chris: It’s the cat. I finally killed it and then I tanned it’s hide.

Butch (outraged): How could you do that?

Chris: It was easy – just a little tap between the eyes with my hammer!

Butch retreats in spluttering outrage. Now Chris is calling me. He never believed the entire office would be so gullible, and he’s also starting to get worried that Butch is about to call the ASPCA on him. However, this is way to much fun to just holler April Fool and move on – so we hatch a plan….

It’s 11:00 – time for lunch. Usually, Chris meets me in the passageway to go to lunch, but he’s “running late” and still at his desk. I enter the vault, sign in at the desk and chat with the secretary a bit. Everyone in the vicinity is visibly nervous and retreating back to their desks or other strategic viewing spots. I make my way toward Chris, who has his back turned to me and is talking to the Gunnersmate. Chris knows I’m approaching me, because Gunner’s eyes are getting huge and his face is turning bright red.

I stop behind Chris, glance up at the bookcase and spy the skin. I take it down and look at it with a dawning look of horror. Chris turns slightly and I throw the skin at him: “Murderer!” and storm out of the office. Shocked silence.

As soon as the door slams shut, Chris is surrounded by sympathetic co-workers offering couches to sleep on and the names of good divorce attorneys. Butch launches another tirade about cat killing, and Gunner is still watching all this in amazement.

I walk back in, and everyone gets quite again. Chris says, “I have just one thing to say to everybody.” And together we say, “April Fool!”

Butch pokes his head out of his office, “Awww, I knew it was a joke the whole time, I was going along with it….” Right.

Years later, Butch made Captain and took command of my unit. When the time came to transfer out, we looked and looked for that cat skin so that we could give it to him as a memento, but it had long since disappeared. I made a new one out of fake fur and glass eyes, but it just wasn’t the same.

Butch, wherever you are, thanks for being such a good sport.

I'm off to a quilt restoration seminar next week, so you'll just have to do without me. Until next time,

The Hunting Widow