The Federalist Blog has a posting about a taxidermist who stuffs road kill. She is referred to as the “Ethical Taxidermist.” I’m not sure how stuffing road kill makes one ethical. I guess it is because the taxidermist had no part in causing the demise of the animals. Seems like that would hold true with 99% of commercial taxidermists. They don’t kill the animals, but wait patiently for the hunter, in search of a trophy, to grace their door. Anyway at the link.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/25/ethical-taxidermist-making-art-roadkill/

If I think about taxidermy, two images come to mind. One was a cartoon in “Playboy.”

It showed an attractive bikini clad woman looking on as a man buggered an irate pelican. The punchline was: “When you said you mounted birds, I just naturally assumed you were a taxidermist.”

The second image was a creation of John Irving in The Hotel New Hampshire. When the family dog Sorrow dies the eldest son stuffs him. When half the family is killed in a plane crash the only thing that is recovered from the wreckage is the stuffed dog.

Okay, I’m not a fan of such trophies. I guess I can understand a mount as the end point, on a memorable hunt. Truth be told, I would have gone with a head mount, rather than incarceration, for some of the assholes I’ve chased. But, it wasn’t an option. Stuffing a family pet; that’s just creepy.

I’m not sure scrapping road kill off the pavement represents the same sense of achievement. It seems to me that the taxidermist is removed to the same degree, whether the cause is a hunter or Buick.

I probably wouldn’t have made the effort to write about this but for a string of entries on “Quora Digest.” I don’t know how I got on the email list but every night there is an entry. For those of you who don’t know Quora it is a Question and answer forum. It is where stupid people go to ask stupid questions. The questions are then answered by people every bit as dumb, if not dumber.

What got me going was a recent question about Charles Manson. The questioner wondered why Manson was convicted of murder when he was nowhere near the scene of any of the murders. He obtained three responses. All three agreed that Manson was not guilty of murder and shouldn’t have been convicted. If you followed their twisted logic, then Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy either.

Smarter people than me said it better:

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

― Daniel Patrick Moynihan

To come full circle, as the girl on the beach learned, it pays to nail down the meaning of a term and not assume anything.