In yesterday's Age newspaper there was an article about Mario Carnesi, who is a taxidermist in Melbourne. He became interested in his craft at the age of 10, when he spotted a stuffed duck at the house of a family friend. He waited some time before taking the plunge but one day, he tells the reporter:
"I was out at the rubbish tip with my dad. There was a dead seagull, but it hadn't been dead for long. It was still pretty fresh. I told dad I was going to take it home and stuff it and he sort of just looked at me and didn't say anything."
I like the picture that paragraph conjures up. To start with, the situation itself is appealing - a dad-and-boy-tip outing is the sort of thing the family at Yaralla might have indulged in. Then there is the father's superb true blue response - 'he sort of just looked at me and didn't say anything.' And the next phrase of the article - "The seagull went into the fridge" - points to a mother at home whose calm and tolerance I can only dream of. There are so many lessons in this story - at least for me.
(And before I finish, I should point out to my friend Polly, whose pets having been giving her a bit of grief lately, that Carnesi, according to the article, will "stuff a guinea pig for $220").
I hope that's with foie gras and truffles.
ReplyDeleteThat would cost less but the finished product might begin to smell if you left it on the mantlepiece for any length of time.
ReplyDeleteOh that's a bit unkind zmkc ... but clearly Polly is a good friend and has taken it all in her stride!
ReplyDeletePolly has a very worrying attitude when it comes to her guinea pigs, Whispering. It's only a matter of time before they're hurled onto the barbecue.
ReplyDeleteJ.A. Baker in The Peregrine lets us know what a gull recently killed smells like: "fresh and sweet, like a mash of raw beef and pineapple."
ReplyDeleteGuinea pigs were a major source of meat for the Incas (or was it the Aztecs, or possibly both?) so it wouldn't be that strange to barbecue them. At least from a dietary point of view.
ReplyDeleteUmbagollah - Maybe Carnesi was just feeling peckish, but was he after pineapple or raw meat?
ReplyDeleteGaw - the prospect of a South American night round at Polly's has been mooted from time to time