“Stuffed” animals, or things that have gone to the taxidermist freak me out. They always kind of bothered me, on the same level that dead people in open caskets bother me: they might decide to move at any point, which would make me jump high enough to see if the light fixtures had been dusted lately.
Hunting and its taxidermied results are very common around here, and I don’t have any moral objections. I’d just rather not have a dead thing staring at me, thanks muchly.
Side note: if they bother you, do not go to “The Antlers” in Soo St. Marie. COVERED in dead animals. A fly fell out of the mouth of a mounted bass over my head on to my dinner… killed my appetite.
I suspect that, if I had a den large enough, there’d be a couple elk heads on the wall. I don’t have much interest in the whole critter being mounted (unless maybe if I could make a table out of something) but they don’t bother me except aesthetically - wasted space and whatnot.
If mounted heads ick you out, you might want to think very carefully before joining an Elks Lodge.
They don’t bother me, either.
I’d tell you to avoid Granzella’s in Williams, California–the sports bar has a massive collection of exotic taxidermy, including a full-sized polar bear–except that the restaurant portion recently burned to the ground due to an electrical issue in the ceiling :(.
I find it gross too. Deer and other animal heads mounted on the wall also always make me sad. Taxidermy seems morbid to me. But then again, I kind of have a corpse phobia. Bones don’t bother me, but animals with meat still on them totally squick me out.
My brother-in-law is a taxidermist. His wife made him get a second freezer. She never knew what she’d see when she went to grab a pound of hamburger.
I like his work. He puts the animals in natural-looking poses, and adds natural things to the display, like branches and pine cones. He did a crow for me, wings spread, mounted on a small log. My cats wouldn’t leave it alone so I gave it back to him. You should see his badger!
I think he worked mostly with roadkill. Gently-killed roadkill.
It squicks me out too. I can handle the natural history museum but in restaurants and places like that it is enough to make me unable to eat dinner. Dead things are not decoration! At least the museum is educating people with them.
Ralph and Kacoo’s in Baton Rouge is like this. You look down at your plate and wonder if you’re eating the third mounted dude on the left.
It doesn’t freak me out too badly except for the big game. I grew up in a bird hunting family, so taxidermied ducks in flight were normal decorating items in my family member’s homes. My grandmother even did an emergency repair on one of my grandfather’s treasured ducks when its butt fell off. I am not joking. I think she superglued it back on.
They don’t “ick me out”, but I don’t like them. Partial or whole dead animals are not my idea of tasteful or interesting decor. Plus I find it sad and pointless that someone has chosen to kill something to create a decoration.
I took this class, mammalogy which was hard as shit since we expected to know the difference between all these tiny little mouse and shrew skulls bodies. In the lab, our professor taught us how to prepare specimens. Note: if you pull the tail off your mouse, you’ve done something wrong. My friend, though, got good enough to work on tiny little bats.
-Lil
I think they’re interesting and enjoyable in a museum. But I don’t want to live with them, because it’s a bit icky and because it seems like a celebration of the “sport” of shooting others.
Though, I did live on the top floor of a museum for a few months, and it was fascinating to wander around downstairs at night. But there were no stuffed animals on the floor where I lived.
I think I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid my father’s aunt had stuffed housecats in her house (her dead husband had been a taxidermist), sewed outfits for them, and at Christmas she arranged them in a Nativity scene (and if I haven’t mentioned it I just did). Deer heads were common decoration in restaurants and in homes from trailer to mansion, so they just never bothered me.
Holding the expertly plastinated fetuses of stillborn conjoined twins (at Mercer Medical College a few years ago) didn’t bother me until my hand touched their hair. Only one thing on Earth feels like baby hair and that’s baby hair- just made me feel somewhat… perverted.
Better not visit our house! My husband has mounts all over the house, including the dining room. Our bedroom and my office are off limits, however (my rules). To be technical, they are not stuffed but consist of a form with the hide stretched across it.
There is a full body mount of a Himalayan Tahr perched on a rock on our living room wall. Very artistic.
I can’t begin to describe the nightmare I had after seeing this one private trophy room. You name it and this guy had probably shot it. I was seriously looking for a mounted human head, because it was about the only thing I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t name them all but I do remember seeing deer, elk, moose, zebra, fox, a fully mounted polar bear, fully mounted giraffe and over the fireplace, was the piece de resistance, the head of an African elephant.
[QUOTE=I couldn’t name them all but I do remember seeing deer, elk, moose, zebra, fox, a fully mounted polar bear, fully mounted giraffe and over the fireplace, was the piece de resistance, the head of an African elephant.
Creepy beyond belief.[/QUOTE]
A full mount of a giraffe takes a seriously high ceiling. I once went to a house where they had a full mount of an elephant in the entry hall. That was one big house…
And, I’m giving thanks.