Dead Stuff

I could see “that look” on Father’s face and knew what was coming,
It was yet another of his many moneymaking schemes

Mother rolled her eyes and expelled one of the heavy sighs she reserved for such occasions.

"And what would that be?"  Mother’s voice dripped sarcasm. All his previous attempts had been failures.

"Why, taxidermy." A certain thing given the avid hunters Father counted among his
many friends. This time, things would be different.

These "avid hunters" Mother knew to be those undesirables who gathered in the back of Doc Griggs' drug store on late afternoons to swap lies and ingest “Elixir” far in excess of it’s so-called medicinal qualities. As far as she was concerned, not a one of 'em could hit the broad side of a barn from twelve feet away.

Several weeks prior, Father had answered an ad in a rural gazette and in turn received a large box containing a supply of eye watering chemicals, paints and a wide selection of glass eyes. There were also a number of books explaining the technique on everything from reptiles to bears.

Automobiles were still something of a rarity in Massnahut County in those days and
many a local critter met its end more out of curiosity than slowness. Father recruited me and my friends to scout around and find him road kill to work out the process.

The first of these was an unfortunate squirrel that had not moved in time. We all stood in rapt fascination while Father skinned and cleaned the critter. It ended with him producing something that might have made it to the Ripley's cartoon in the Sunday papers. It was a pitiful, hunchbacked specimen it's own mother would not have recognized.

By this time Father's base of operations had moved to the barn as the squirrel experiment, which took place in the basement, had filled the house with a variety of pungent odors.These had been commented upon by some of Mother's church circle in their weekly Bible study in the parlor.

Father just scratched his head philosophically and looked for another, perhaps simpler organism until his skills improved.

The breakthrough occurred one day when a friend of mine appeared with a large
deceased toad he had found in his ramblings. It must have died of old age as it was in what Father described as a "pristine condition." He set to work with a will and, after curing the hide, had what looked like a glistening toad shaped sock.

This he filled with plaster of Paris and formed back into proper toad shape. He clamped a clothespin on the mouth to keep it shut, and put it aside to "set up".
He then went at the hide with the paints until he achieved a more or less lifelike color and set in a pair of glass eyes. A coat of shellac gave his efforts what he described as a "rainy day shine."  Father proudly declared the thing a success.

It was too! He took that toad with him everywhere he went and everyone just had to have one. The orders were coming thick and fast so Father had to spend every spare minute he had working on those toads my friends and I brought him for a nickel each. Old Henry Ford would have been proud of the production line of deceased amphibians that took place over the next months. By the time the weather got cold and the toad supply went into the mud for the winter Father had jars of 'em just waiting to be processed.

By this time his standard stuffed toad was showing up all over town holding down stacks of papers and bills and even loan applications at the bank.

It was around mid-February that it occurred to Father that what was now his standard toad was becoming ho-hum, pedestrian.

" I need something,” He mused, “Something grander, something more avant-garde."    Mother just shuddered.

He sequestered himself in the barn for days while he worked out the process. None of us could enter.

From time to time he came rummaging through the house looking for scraps from
Mother's sewing basket. He hurried away with bits of cardboard, colored paper and packing tissue. Any questions about what was happening would be deflected with a smile and the assurance that they, "was progressin'".

Finally, the great day came.

Mother and I had all returned from town one day to find the dining table draped with an old sheet. By the protrusions it was clear that here was Father's magnum opus of toad stuffing. With a flourish he whipped aside the sheet.

Mother gasped, sat down heavily, and covered her face with her hands.

Here were four of the critters all dressed up and sitting at a card table involved in a lively poker game. Next to them was a clown toad with over-sized yellow shoes, a white painted face and wide red grin.

There was a golfer in full fig leaning casually on a club. There was one largish specimen dressed in a black cutaway coat with striped trousers and a shiny top hat that bore an uncanny resemblance to Thanatoginus Stillfellow, the town undertaker.

At some point in the great work, Father had run out of proper frog eyes and used bird and fish eyes of various colors and sizes that had a most startling effect.
This was most profound in one posed as a drunk leaning on a lamp post, bottle in hand, surveying the world with large, goggling red eyes.

There was a pair of dancing toads dressed as a bride and groom with a trio of singing toads and a whole toad string band to play along.

Finally, there was a bearded Da Vinci toad with a toady Mona Lisa posing for a portrait, perfect down to the enigmatic smile.

That was some piece of work. Over Mother's tearful and futile protests to keep this thing between us, Father arranged with Elmer Gout, who owned the Emporium, to display the whole kit and caboodle in his front window.

It was the talk of Massnahut County. Photos made the Camden Record-Eagle.
Folks came from as far away as Chester County to see the wonder for themselves.
Elmer's candy and soda sales shot up and Father was offered a hundred dollars for the whole she-bang by some city feller who happened to see it on his way down to Bar Harbor.

Father declined the offer. You see his love for his little friends- as he took to calling
them- far exceeded his original mercenary intent. He said it would be like selling his
family.

Mother, on the other hand, dryly announced she would consider any reasonable offer to take both Father and his morbid stuffed friends off her hands.

Well, you know how things go with such novelties. The new soon wore off. Elmer's
candy and soda sales declined so he announced he needed the widow to display some new corsets.

Father's friends were relegated back to the barn, as Mother would not have them in the house. Undaunted, Father put up a sign on the road advertising the collection to passers by and from this he gleaned a few dollars and baleful looks from Mother brought on by strangers traipsing around the yard and asking for ice water.

By and by the sign came down and the collection gathered dust.

Besides, Father was busy on a new project he had in mind for a, ah, - well, perhaps that's best left for another time.