Seamus has expressed an interest in taxidermy. He’s a really artistic kid and he loves hunting, so it seems like a natural combination for him. Even before touching a knife, he thought that he might want to go to college for it. I’m not so sure there’s a taxidermy major anywhere, but there sure as hell are some good wildlife management and other outdoorsy majors, and I’ll take any excuse to get that kid engaged in his own future.

So for Christmas, I talked to our taxidermist friend, who gave me some recommendations and said that he’d be happy to show him a thing or two. Mike’s already got a 15-year-old under his wing and he’s really patient with the kids. I bought Seamus a kit to completely do a squirrel, and you never saw a kid so thrilled to get a box full of chemicals and some knives. I was hoping that either he or one of us parents would shoot a squirrel for him to work on, but they were a little thin up there this year and we didn’t take one after I’d decided to do this. The skinned one in the freezer sure isn’t going to do him much good, except maybe with dumplings.

When we were fox hunting the other weekend, Junior spotted a road-killed grey squirrel on a corner. He joked, “There’s your squirrel for Seamus.” I took him at his word and asked him to stop the truck. I hopped out and it didn’t look too bad; fresh and only a little squished, so I scooped it up and threw it in the back of the truck with the fox. The guys spent the rest of the day poking fun at me for collecting roadkill, but that’s fair; so did I.

A roadkill squirrel was perfect. If he messed up, it wouldn’t devastate him as much as if he cut a hole in his first trophy. I put it in the freezer when we got home, and when he came home later in the week, proudly showed it off to him.

He was a little confused. Mom was giving him a frozen dead animal why, exactly?

Once he figured it out, he was all for it. As soon as he got home this Friday, he asked if this would be a good squirrel weekend. I thought it would be (I also thought I would be over this crud by now) so we took it out to defrost. It’s a good thing we have two fridges going. I don’t mind game in the drinks fridge, but I don’t think I’d be too cool with fine fluffly hair wafting over the butter.

So after the girls went home and the distractions were minimized, he and I got the tools out. We looked at the instructions, since I’ve never caped anything myself, and certainly haven’t worked on something this small and fussy. I made the initial cuts, but after that, I just held skin back out of the way and kept pressure on it while he did the cutting. I tell you what, it takes a lot of trust to let your ten-year-old wield a scalpel a quarter inch from your finger which he can’t see.

He did fantastically.  All 20 of our fingers are still intact; he listened and paid attention, and learned a lot of anatomy without being aware of it. All of those little nitpicky areas we took very slowly, but he did them perfectly. Getting the face skinned was an adventure, partially because it turned out Mr. Fluffly died of a squashed head and we didn’t have a lot of reference points. He did it though; got teeny little eyelids removed intact and itty bitty nostrils removed perfectly. We’re only a little hung up on the tail; it’s not pulling like it should. We’ve put it up for now, and we’ll get back to it tomorrow if he gets all of his homework done in time. I think that’s an excellent incentive.

It was oddly some great mother-son time too. This is something we’re learning together. I may know a little more about the basics, but I haven’t ever caped a squirrel either, and he liked figuring it out with me. I think it more than made up for mama being too sick to take him shooting today; he can beat me in trap another day.