I went to one of those places where reenactors stroll around Ye Olde buildings and because this is Canada, this place is an old Hudson Bay Company outposts, and they had *so many furs*. (Historically accurate!)
I have questions.
Just, so many. The *least* remarkable thing was like a bouquet of about 20 coyote pelts.
I asked one of the reenactors if he knew where they came from, because i hoped it wasn't a fur farm (obv. not the coyotes, but the racoons and foxes and ermines, possibly?) and he said he thought they were donations.
From WHO????
@Betty people cleaning out their grandparents estates
@Satsuma there were approximately 80 prepared beaver pelts. All of them had been stretched on a frame. I'm concerned about what grandpa has been up to.
@Satsuma @duinath okay, fair. Yes, this I am aware of. I know how many genuinely neat things you pull out of your attic and say "this should be saved, it's part of our history!" and then they end up in a museum basement somewhere because everybody has six of them in their attic.
It's just that these aren't wearable beaver, it's a bunch all cured and stretched, so slightly less likely to be in someone's closet.
@Satsuma @duinath they look like a stiff, featureless oval, furry on one side. Not much scope for taxidermy
https://www.hunter-ed.com/nationaltrapper/studyGuide/Preparing-Beaver-Pelts/221099_87964/
(The illustration isn't bad, but if you click through it gets into slightly more detail than you may want on fur prep)
@Betty @Satsuma it does just seem like a normal(…?) murder grandpa hobby project, to me. murder grandpa takes a few kills each season for a couple decades, runs out of useful stuff to do with them, doesn’t want to throw them away, and… tada. and then his grandkids also don’t feel right tossing them, and no one will buy the thing, so. it’s like those people whose walls are just covered in deer heads. no one needs that many heads.
@duinath @Betty i have some family members who help run a small community museum@and the sheer amount of crap in the world is just boggling. If you express even a whisper of an interest you can get a hundred china cabinets for the cost of having a truck to pick them all up with