Sunday 2 January 2011

Get Stuffed

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").

7 comments:

  1. I hope that's with foie gras and truffles.

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  2. That would cost less but the finished product might begin to smell if you left it on the mantlepiece for any length of time.

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  3. Oh that's a bit unkind zmkc ... but clearly Polly is a good friend and has taken it all in her stride!

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  4. Polly 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.

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  5. J.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."

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  6. Guinea 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.

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  7. Umbagollah - Maybe Carnesi was just feeling peckish, but was he after pineapple or raw meat?
    Gaw - the prospect of a South American night round at Polly's has been mooted from time to time

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