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COLUMN: First stab at taxidermy was the cat's meow — sadly

As a youngster, our columnist went to pains to create a life-like mount of a ruffed grouse and it was a thing of beauty, until it wasn't
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This photograph of a real ruffed grouse is what the author's stuffed grouse was intended to look like.

Now that spring is in the air, it is inevitable that spring cleaning kicks into gear. The past several cold and indoor months were supposed to be filled with cleaning/sorting/discarding types of activities, but, you know, just didn’t happen.

So with a renewed interest in getting things organized prior to real time outdoors, a storage area was tackled.

I rediscovered the small block of wood tucked behind a stack of boxes. It's just an innocent looking piece of stained pine, about the same size of a shoebox but only a couple of inches thick with a smooth, routered bevel around the top edge, and two small holes drilled into the top. Finding it tripped a major memory flashback.

As a young and aspiring naturalist I was emulating the ways of the great ones before me — by shooting and stuffing samples! Audubon, Darwin, and most of the well-known wildlife painters of the era often and regularly shot or trapped the objects of their desire for closer examinations. The study skins that they prepared for museums throughout the 1800s are still referred to by modern biologists and artists.

And when I was a young teen with role models ranging from Davey Crockett to John James Audubon, shooting and stuffing birds just seemed the natural thing to do. Only it turned out to be a whole lot harder than I first envisioned.

First, there was the challenge of acquiring said specimen. Having been born about 100 or so years after the aforementioned role models, I had to deal with such modern nuisances as a hunting licence, abiding by hunting regulations, knowing which species were protected by law, finding a place to hunt and getting transportation to and from such areas.

If successful with all that, parental permission was then required to try my rudimentary taxidermy skills in the house. I ended up having to work in the stone-walled basement, head carefully positioned between the open floor joists (there was barely five feet between floor and floor joists), a bare bulb glaring over my shoulder, and a wobbly workbench dedicated to my activity. This was about as close to heaven as I could imagine.

On dark winter evenings, after homework was done (or alleged to have been done) I would head to the basement, read the taxidermy manual and try my hand at re-creating a lifeless carcass into a life-like mount. Nicked fingers, spoiled skins, and fruitless endeavours were the usual result. 

Then I got lucky, or finally had enough mistakes behind me to try something new (like patience and care), and a ruffed grouse began to actually resemble first a bird, and then a fairly close representation of, surprise, a ruffed grouse! I was jubilant! And for a Grade 8 kid to be jubilant about anything was an event in itself.

My dad seemed to acknowledge that maybe all the funny smells from the basement might be resulting in something after all. So he quietly took a hefty chunk of pine, routered a clean bevel around it, stained it a nice mahogany colour, and pre-drilled holes to set the leg wires into. I was quite inspired to finish this masterpiece and took great pains to position the legs just right so as to fit the wooden base in a natural manner.

The result was, well, pretty good, for a first-time mount. Not perfect, for even I could see that one wing drooped a bit, and the left eye seemed to be a tad bugged outwards, but presentable nonetheless. My mom even allowed it to be displayed on top of the piano, right in the living room!

That evening my parents had company over and we kids were supposed to be upstairs and well on the way to bed. But I knew the visitors, and I wanted so much to show them my creation. So I slipped downstairs, noted that everyone was chatting away in the kitchen, tippy-toed across the hallway and entered the living room. A few minutes later my mom entered, no doubt drawn here by the loud sobs of her eldest offspring.

My grouse was gone. Well, not gone, just displaced — to several different locations throughout the living room. In preparation for our visitors the cover to the piano's keyboard had been lowered (quicker than dusting), thus inadvertently allowing our family cat easy access to this wonderful and intriguing new toy atop the piano. 

By the time I arrived, Hercules had whopped the head off, removed the droopy wing, and had the tail feathers strewn amongst the other bric-a-brac with feline artistic flair. Two grey stumps of legs with bare wires projecting from them was all that remained attached to the wooden base. Devastated was a mild way of describing how I felt.

Time heals sorrow. That incident happened over 50 years ago. The cat was forgiven (as was the one who closed the piano lid… Marlene), and I went on to try a few more taxidermy challenges, only to find that wildlife photography was what I'd rather be doing. 

I repositioned the wooden block (and all the memories it holds) back on the storage room shelf, picked up George the cat, who likes to explore in here whenever he gets a chance, turned the light off and left to do other things. Spring cleaning can wait for another day.