April 26, 2004
Dead Pets
There are a number of wonders at A Case of Curiosities, but my favorites are the cases of boxing squirrels , Mr. Potter’s collection (note the monkey riding the goat) and the artist's own Kitten Princess of Winter, Birmingham Roller Diva, and Beloved Pet
Here is the artist on pets.
“Pet taxidermy was not uncommon during Victorian times, but does present special problems. I believe that our cultural bond with certain domesticated species (i.e.: dogs and cats) is so strong that they just don't look right when taxi'd. Unless you like a wonky "look", or can appreciate the mount as just a fine specimen of its breed, it would best to pose them as if asleep”
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When I was a kid I had a tarantula named Gargantua, but I mortally injured him during a school science-fair. He held on for a week, but the pierced thorax was too much to bear, and eventually all life oozed from him.
I built a coffin out of cardboard and scotch-tape. On the outside of the coffin I inscribed hieroglyphs from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and then I tied the coffin shut with twine and buried him in the back yard next to the spot where a few years before I had buried my first pet, Smokey.
That should have been the end of the story, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Gargantua. I pictured him thrashing in his coffin, scratching against his case with horrible chitin legs. And poor Smokey, buried not a foot away, not resting but tormented, her ghost prowling through the tall grass after the noise of the giant spider.
So the following summer I disinterred Gargantua. At dusk, dressed all in black, I dug up his sarcophagus with a spade. The coffin had held up, and when I shook it I heard a strange rattle, like a clump of dried leaves wrapped around a marble.
Our home was nearly a century old, and in the basement there was a room filled with dirt and cobwebs. It was terrifying, dusty and claustrophobic like a tomb, the air moist, the walls crumbling. At the opening to the room there was a slope of dirt, and I crawled over it on all fours, then dropped a few feet into the hollow behind. There, with a flashlight gripped in my teeth, and surrounded on all sides by his kin, I buried Gargantua for the second time.
