“Sand! Why, it’s quite light.”
“I mean, was too full of sand; it’s emptied out now. I told you that’s how you stuff reptiles, skin ’em, and fill ’em full of sand till they’re dry, and then pour it out.”
“Oh yes, I remember; but that one is too stout.”
“Yes,” said Mercer, “that’s the worst of it; they will come so if you don’t mind. The skins stretch so, and then they come humpy.”
“And what’s that?” I asked. “Looks like a fur sausage.”
“You get out with your fur sausages. See if you could do it better. That’s a stoat.”
I burst out laughing now, and he looked at me in a disconsolate way, and then smiled sadly.
“Yes, it is a beast after all,” he said. “My father has got a book about anatomy, but I never thought anything about that sort of thing till I tried to stuff little animals. You see they haven’t got any feathers to hide their shape, and they’ve got so much shape. A bird’s only like an egg, with a head, and two wings on the side, so that if you make up a ball of tow like an egg, and pull the skin over it, you can’t be so very far wrong; but an animal wants curves here and hollows there, and nicely rounded hind legs, and his head lifted up gracefully, and that— Ugh! the wretch! I’ll burn it first chance. I won’t try any more animals.”
“A squirrel looks nice stuffed,” I observed, as I recalled one I had seen in a glass case, having a nut in its fore paws, and with its tail curved up over its back.
“Does it?” said Mercer dolefully; “mine don’t.”