SMHT: Rats

Happy Sunday! I hope this email finds you well, wherever you may be. I am packing my bags and wrapping up research for our string of Sinisterhood live shows we will be performing over the next week! We’re hitting up San Antonio (tickets here), Dallas (sold out!), Houston (FOR MY BIRTHDAY! tickets here), then Dallas again (tickets here - almost sold out) to wrap things up in the coming weeks. Come hang out with us at any or all of those shows!

Recently for our Patreon subscribers, Christie and I went out exploring using the Randonautica app and filmed our journey. Our final stop was across from a store front in East Dallas where I took a taxidermy class. In mentioning it, I got some questions about when/where/why/how I took such a class. I think this piece will answer them all. Hope you enjoy!

Happy (almost) Halloween!

xoxo, Heather

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Rats

I have a dead mouse on my mantle. It didn't die there. I actually made it. I always say I “made” it because when I say I “stuffed” it, it sounds like what you do with a turkey and people always assume it has something to do with the butt.

I feel like if I say I “made” it, it lends an air of creativity. I sound like an artist. A rat artist, yes, but an artist nonetheless.

You might wonder how I came to “make” a dead mouse. The short answer is Facebook algorithms. I don't know what I was searching that caused Facebook to suggest, "Mouse Taxidermy for Beginners" as something I might be interested in, but it was right.

That's the thing about the algorithms. They know us better than our closest friends, our most intimate partners, and even ourselves. You see, I didn't know that I wanted to sign up for Mouse Taxidermy, until I saw the ad and thought, "Oh yeah. I definitely do."

The main reason why I wanted to take the class was that I wanted to see what type of weirdos would sign up for a mouse taxidermy class. And so, I, myself, signed up for said class.

I was given two options to sign up: send a Facebook message or call the store. The thought of saying out loud to another person, "I would like to give you money to do this please," was too embarrassing and horrifying. Instead, I sent a vague message to the store. Facebook reads your messages, you know. I thought I was one more mention of taxidermy away from destroying my feed’s algorithm forever and being put on a watch list.

My message only said said, “I would like to sign up for the class on March 23.”

The reply came.

“Cool, call me for details.”

I closed my very fancy corporate lawyer door in my very fancy corporate lawyer office on a Thursday morning. The office next to me was occupied by one of the younger partners in the firm, and I often had to hear him on calls with everyone from clients, to his wife, to his pool guy.

I dialed the number and and whispered my clandestine plans into the phone. I gave him my credit card information, and I was in. It turns out there's not a prerequisite for mouse taxidermy class.

I get a lot of questions when I tell people I did this class. The second most asked question behind, "Did you wear gloves" — We did not — is "How much did it cost?" I am here to tell you I was charged $165, tax and mouse included.

The class itself was held in the back room of an antique store. I was the first to arrive, except for a woman in jean cut offs, a Rolling Stones t-shirt, and glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She was the teacher, but she made us call her The Professor.

Another woman entered shortly after me. She was shy and hunkered over, with a yellow cardigan pulled tight across her shoulders. Without any prompting or greeting, she began to speak.

“Thank god for this class,” she said. “I shouldn't have tried to do this myself at home. Especially not with something so big.”

“Did you do a moose for your first time, too?” I asked.

Both the girl and the Professor looked at me, silent and disgusted.

Taxidermy Lesson Number 1: Taxidermy is not a joke.

“No, it was a cat,” Yellow Cardigan said.

All I could think was, Where did she get the cat? And then I figured she wasn’t shy and I had nothing to lose, so asked out loud, “Where did you get the cat?”

“The road.”

I imagined this woman, grocery bag in one hand, spatula in the other, going out and scooping up the remains of someone's pet. I wondered, Did she do it in the day light? Did she wait for cover of darkness? Which is more horrifying?

The Professor stopped her. “No, no, no. You cannot taxidermy roadkill. Roadkill has disease inside of it that no doctor can even diagnose.”

Taxidermy Lesson Number 2: Don't do roadkill.

Yellow Cardigan nodded.

“I just wish my apartment was bigger,” she said. “It was such a mess and those YouTube videos were not helpful.”

Again, I just pictured her hunkered over her coffee table, covered in entrails, trying to rewind the YouTube video with her one clean pinky.

The professor scoffed at the woman and sounded even more offended than the news about the roadkill.

“No, no. You cannot use YouTube videos. You must take an in-person class to do it right.”

Taxidermy Lesson Number 3: Don't try this at home.

Other people eventually entered, and I made my way to the other end of the table. I took a seat beside a woman in jean overalls, wearing a pair of wing-tipped glasses and this short and spiky haircut. I could tell around her kids’ middle school that she was the '“fun mom.”

The Professor stooped over a waiting cooler. Oh good, I thought. We get snacks.

Instead, she pulled a large gallon Ziploc bag full of frozen mice and shut the lid. We were instructed to hold out our hands in a bowl-shape, where the Professor deposited our assigned mice.

“I didn’t kill these mice myself,” the Professor said. I hadn’t asked, but it did cross my mind. “These are snake mice who didn’t make it.”

If you have to be a mice anyway, and you have a choice to be ravaged by an enormous snake or die of natural causes, you’d probably choose the latter. If, then, you had to choose whether you’d be thrown away or given over to a crew of goofs sitting shoulder to shoulder at a card game behind an antiques shop? The choice may not be so easy. Still, here we were.

When Fun Mom got hers, she cradled it in her hands. As we considered our mice, the Professor told us that they were all boy mice. Female mice have milk ducts that are way too hard to cut out.

“I did you a favor and ordered a whole bag of boys,” she told us.

Fun Mom looked down so sad and told her mouse, “Oh no! But I already named you Ophelia.” The mouse didn’t move.

We began cutting open our specimens. The Professor let us know that everything in front of us was an everyday object. From the scalpel to the safety scissors, she assured us that these were all things we could find easily at home.

“Most people,” she said, “Already have all these things lying around.” I looked at the Borax and the scalpel and realized she and I have different circles of “most people” we each run with.

In the center of the table were several bottles of gel Super Glue. She emphasized many times the importance of gel.

“You would not believe the mice I have seen ruined by using the wrong glue,” she said. How do you ruin a dead mouse? By gluing it to the paper plate? To the table? To yourself? What would you even write on the emergency room intake form?

After the skin was removed, the Professor came around to collect the carcasses in the same gallon Ziploc bag.

“Do not worry,” she told us. “Nothing goes to waste. I will personally mail these to an artist in Florida who does bone art.”

I searched my mind for memories of the post office. When you mail a package, they always ask whether your parcel contains forbidden items: explosives, gasoline, ammunition. But carcasses? I looked at the professor expertly tucking the bodies in the bag and let go of my fears. She had definitely done this before.

Before the Professor had collected the last skinless little body, Yellow Cardigan piped up.

“Excuse me, Professor? Can we keep our carcasses?”

We? I thought. No, look around, sister. You're the only one with your hand up.

At that question, the Professor, a woman who just told us she had seen mice be “ruined,” got a horrified look on her face.

“I guess,” the Professor said. After all, the class was advertised as $165, “mouse included.” Seemed like Yellow Cardigan wanted to get her money’s worth and take the whole mouse.

The Professor handed Cardigan a small sandwich-sized Ziploc bag. Yellow Cardigan dropped the skinless little body inside and sealed it shut. She then leaned over and slipped it into her tote bag beneath the table. Thirty minutes into a three-hour class.

When it was time to stuff the mice, the Professor let us know that the stuffing material we were using was high quality.

“This is the same stuffing they use at Build-a-Bear,” she said.

I suppose you could open up a mall store front, call it Stuff-a-Mouse, and watch as all the parents fight to get reservations. “We are having Jaden's birthday party at Stuff-a-Mouse this year. $165, but you keep the mouse.”

After we used our high-grade materials and stuffed them, we had to mount them. The Professor gave us small blocks of wood, about the size of a match box, with 6-inch wires sticking straight up out of their centers. I took one for myself. Then, I took a look at my mouse. With a whispered apology, I shoved the wire right up its butt. Another woman with long braided pigtails down each side of her face asked if we had to use the blocks.

“Not necessarily,” the Professor said. She had rules, but she wasn’t some dictator. “Did you have something else in mind?”

Pigtails then reached beneath the table and pulled out a chihuahua-sized plastic dragon.

“I brought this,” she said.

The Professor said, with zero judgment, “I will help you.” She then got to work, helping Pigtails glue her mouse to the back of the dragon. When the glue dried, the mouse ended up riding the beast, triumphant. Pigtails was grateful and pulled out a small golden wig that she had braided herself. She whispered as she fitted the wig to the mouse's head, “This is Khaleesi mouse.”

Meanwhile, Fun Mom beside me had pulled out an entire bedroom set. She had created a bed and headboard with popsicle sticks that she had painted white. The bed was made, complete with a tiny little mouse quilt, a tiny little mouse pillow, and a tiny little book for the mouse to read. Ophelia was all set to turn in for the night with a nice book.

These people are lunatics, I thought to myself.

Then I reached into my bag and pulled out my 1970s vintage Barbie doll graduation robe. It took me weeks on eBay to find the perfect one. I wrapped the fabric around the mouse and carefully glued it with the gel SuperGlue. Next I cut the bottom of the robe down to size, so it touched just the top of the mouse’s bottom paws. I sat back to admire my work, but instead I was disappointed.

It was just a stupid rat in a black dress, not the revered Supreme Court justice that I hoped it would be. Just as my disappointment set in, Fun Mom asked the group, “Does anyone need any extra lace?”

“Yes,” I said before anyone else could answer. Taking it from her, I glued the tiny strip to my mouse's collar. Suddenly, there she was: The Honorable Rat Bader Ginsburg.

I looked around at everyone and their creations. Pigtails with her Khaleesi Mouse. Fun Mom with Ophelia. Yellow Cardigan and the giant painted mushroom to which she had glued her mouse. I surveyed the class — a dozen people, heads down, diligent in their work — and thought, What a bunch of weirdos. When class finished, I set Rat Bader Ginsberg in my passenger seat, cranked on the engine, and drove her home.

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Here is Rat Bader Ginsberg in all its glory!