Fruitcake Rave II

Creepy Dead Animal Eyes That Look Like They're Watching You

Fruitcakeness II

To my defense, I always post a health warning before every Fruitcake Rave, and to all those who hate pointless, vapid laughs that leave your mind unimproved and unenlightened (though I will lighten it and most probably, sedate it), or things that are, for all practical purposes, useless:

BEWARE.

(Read that again, but add your own scary font and theme music) Nonetheless, the post is not as completely fruitcake as my Posh Hotel post, though most likely, in the big scheme of things, fruitcake anyways. But hey, if we're going cosmic, what isn't?

I've just come back from Calbera, a huge* outdoor (hunting, fishing, hiking...) store, and my mind is still reeling. Walking through the double doors, I ran straight into, what seemed to me to be one huge, macho, trigger-happy, man fantasy. They even had a gun library, for crying out loud. Down the aisles, as far as the eye could see, were camo apparel, guns, and knives.

And dead animals.

Now before I totally wig out, let me just say, dead animals scare me. Live animals are cool, I mean, they're facinating. But when they're dead, it's just wrong. Especially if they're still staring at you, trapped in some far-off time. Heck, they don't even have to be dead to creep one out. I mean, have you ever walked in my closet? One one shelf, you'll find boxes and boxes of pencils, paper, fabric, feathers, junk, etc, and clothes (my side), and on the other, you'll find an expectant audience of stuffed animals staring at you as you hastily pull on your pink bunny jammies.

Actually, in my brother's defense, he took pity on me and turned them around, but now it looks like a bunch of animals are holding a top secret meeting. Hmm. Take your pick.

That's just weird.

But when you enter Cabela's , the first thing that strikes you is this huge, fenced off area full of dead animals in a faux safari habitat. Really. I just don't understand, it's almost like they're trying to make you think about, oh, how much fun the animals will have in their natural habitat, frolicking around with each other, making lots of friends and being wild and free...when they're dead, stuffed, and kept in a large air conditioned room full of tiny kids screaming

"HEY MOM CHECK THIS OUT WOW LOOK AT THAT ELEPHANT THAT IS SO BIG CAN I HAVE SOME MORE CHOCOLA...." and so on.

Does anyone just find that slightly disturbing?

And the heads. The heads. That's slightly creepy. I mean, in the old days, we used to take heads as bounties or as proof that we killed so and so. But I'm pretty sure MacDuff didn't mount the head of the ignoble traitor, MacBeth on a wood plaque over his dinner table. I don't know about you, but I don't want a fluffy bighorn ram watching me eat his near relatives.

Now, I guess I should just say, I'm not a vegetarian or anything. I'm not trying to make a statement about animal rights or something. I'm not really making an effort to say anything, really. The post is exactly what it looks like-- me explaining my fear of really creepy dead stuffed animals.

Hunting is ok, I mean, we all have to survive, right? At the same time, we should never hunt a species to extinction, or introduce species that can take over the world. Dead animals are neither here nor there. I don't mind eating bul go gi (korean barbecue) and I don't freak out at the sight of road kill. Those are just parts of life. Hunting, too, we need to eat something, right**? However, why would you kill something so you can stuff it and have it look at you 24/7?

Taxidermists...um...Ok, I guess, but really, if you admire it and it has like, huge horns or whatever it is people like, wouldn't the best idea be to let it live so it can breed and (hopefully) pass on it's genes to more babies, who will also breed and pass on their genes, and....etc. etc. Why would people want it watching them?

I don't know... there's just something seriously creepy about a dead animal who just stands there, often posed to look like it's alive, watching you. Come on, people, you're not fooling us, it's dead, so please, please, bury it. Especially the eyes, sometimes you can admire them, like, oh, wow, this is so cool, what an amazing thing, but then you realize, these are corpses with fake eyes in them watching you! It's one step away from digging up somebody's grandmother, stuffing her, and placing her in her 'natural habitat' (aka rocking chair) so later generations can come up and go, "wow, cool! This used to be Grandma!"

I'm rambling. One or two scary dead stuffed animals might be ok. An osteology museum is just plain cool. But when you walk into a room full of animal heads that are staring at you....I don't know...

There's something really disturbing about that.

This is Quiet girl, going to hide under her bed right now.

-Shhhhh....don't let them find me.....

*Actually, huge doesn't begin to describe it. It's so overkill, it makes me sick.

**It's the food chain, people. Learn it.