MOUSE TAXIDERMY

Hurrah, it’s finally stopped raining!  Mental note to self – ring Bournemouth Council to cancel planning application for a moat and put the ‘build your own ark’ kit back in the shed. 

A quick tour of garden inspection has revealed a series of watery ‘graves’ that have unexpectedly appeared in our vegetable growing area.  Four rectangles of gloopy mud and leaves and a healthy looking crop of weeds growing in the covered beds. 

Nothing but mud and leaves

Strawberry beds to tidy up

This last spate of wind has left a trail of destruction and endless rain has made it impossible to begin the annual post-new year preparation for spring planting.  

Bamboo screening to be replaced

Planter smashed by plank blown off next door's scaffolding

I know I shouldn’t complain since our minor problems are nothing compared to the devastation faced by those living in the local mobile home parks, many of whom have been evacuated from their homes several times in the past month but still, it’s pretty depressing none the less.

January is always a crap month for gardeners and in general.  To lift my spirits I consider finding a new winter hobby that doesn’t involve the great outdoors and come across this interesting advert for mouse taxidermy.

Why folks would want to stuff mice and display them on their mantle-pieces is beyond me but it does make me think of Wilbur.  Have I mentioned Wilbur before?  Probably not.  He’s one of those bizarre family secrets best left in the closet. 

Wilbur is a mouse or rather was a mouse, in the sense that he once happily scurried about the tunnels of the London Underground before being preserved for posterity in a dozen coats of clear varnish for one of my brother’s more eccentric student art projects.  I think this was during his Damien Hirst phase at Chelsea.  Now don’t for one minute imagine my brother as some kind of weird pied piping rat catcher employed by TFL, Wilbur was already dead on the platform before being immortalised by B&Q over 20 years ago.  No creatures were harmed during the making of this art project.

As far as I know, Wilbur’s still intact.  Sat on his tiny haunches, little beady eyes peeping out of his resin-like bubble in some long forgotten corner of my brother’s flat.  Every now and again we find Wilbur, dust him down and reminisce over some of the crazier moments of our youth.  

MORE ABOUT:

Taxidermy - http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/attractions/stuff-it-taxidermy-is-the-latest-craze-9043786.html

Damien Hirst - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/9606498/Damien-Hirst-condemned-for-killing-9000-butterflies-in-Tate-show.html

Pied Piper - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin