2025-01-12
When Paul was fifty four, nearly sixty four, he saw a bird fall down dead when he was walking home from work. It was a young robin. He carried it home. It did not seem right to leave it alone on the street where he was sure some driver who was not paying attention would run it over.
Now, Paul did not know taxidermy. But his son had shown him how to use the internet. As soon as he got home, he went down to the basement and put the dead robin on the workbench beside the desk. He scoured the internet for hours into the wee small hours, noting down all the essential steps, all the contradictions between the different sources, all the equipment he would need, and when the sun rose, he heard his wife coming down the stairs.
"Have you been down here all night?" she said, handing him a cup of coffee.
"Yes."
"Doing what?"
He pointed to the workbench.
"I don't understand," she said.
"It was just laying there on the street."
"So?" she said.
"It did not seem right to leave it."
"Paul..." she said, stroking the back of his head and remaining whistles of hair. Cecilia was still as beautiful and wise as when he had met her but she was not curious and Paul knew she did not really understand even though he knew she wanted to. She went up the stairs again.
He finished his coffee and compiled a shopping list. He grabbed his coat and went out the door. Some of the stuff on the list was hard to get, especially on a Saturday, and some of the young people working at the hardware store looked at him with worried faces. But soon he had everything and he went home before the workbench where the robin was waiting patiently. It did not take long before he had finished it, depending on how you look at it. His back ached and it was dark outside again, but soon he saw the light come in through the basement window. He stretched and looked at the bird before him. It sat perched on a branch he had taken from the tree in the backyard which he had glued haphazardly on a wooden platform. The skin looked stretched and loose at the same time, with the eyes being particularly horror inducing, looking at two directions at the same time but always straight at you no matter from which direction you were. But he had never been prouder of anything in his life. There was a quiet look of pride in its eyes, that perhaps it knew something that you didn't.
His wife did not think that, and he saw she was trying to stifle a laugh when he showed it to her the next day. She did not understand. Perhaps this is why he tried to hide his continued endeavor from her. At his lunch break he would walk beside highways looking for roadkill, sometime getting lost in the hunt and forgetting to go back to work at all afterwards. In the evenings he would be at hunting message boards, looking for people who did not want the skin of their kills. It surprised him at how many were willing to part with the skin, oftentimes citing they did not want to waste any part of the animal. Life, in some twisted sense, was sacred. At nights he would be hovering over his workbench, toiling away. He would stash the finished creations in boxes and in cabinets and in drawers and behind books in the overstuffed living room bookshelf.
At first, it was easy to hid it from his wife. But she was a battle axe. With a tender step she would suddenly appear behind him --- supposedly curious. But Paul knew she wasn't.
"What are you doing?" she would ask.
"Learning something new, dear," he would say.
"It's good you're still curious," she would say and smile. But Paul knew what she really meant
The number of taxidermied quickly grew to the point that scavenging for roadkill was not enough anymore, no matter how much work he skipped to roam the streets. He made a deal with some local hunters he found on an internet forum. They did not want the skin, and they did not like to waste parts of the animal. Life, in some twisted sense, was sacred.
Paul began to make clothes for his subjects.
A brown felt hat, thin rimmed glasses and a cane for a fox he found on the side of the highway.
The hedgehog with a red backpack and propeller hat.
And, of course, the ten robins lined up proudly on the windowpane, all with yellow raincoats and one leather glove. "It looks better that way. And that way the kids won't tease me at the playground," they would say, and Paul would smile.
His wife began standing by the door gently sobbing, but Paul did not know why. There was nothing sad about what Paul was doing. He was creating something. Perhaps, Paul thought, she was sad about Eric & Emma. He did not blame her for that. He was sad too.
Eventually some of the larger animals had to be moved to the living room upstairs. Someone he had met in the hunting community had gifted him a bear. Paul had done his best, but it was a bit crooked. There was, however, Paul hoped, still a pride and kindness and strength in that face, no matter how much it had shrunk. He dressed it up in a trench coat. It overlooked the street through the living room window. A noble protector of the street, if only you thought him that way.
After a while people started showing up on their front lawn and take pictures of the growing display. Some knocked and wanted to grab a picture next to them. He invited them in since there was no reason not to.
People would take photos and film his animals and then film him and he would explain and they would ask questions and then they left.
Eventually a news crew came and wanted to interview him. They were there for a couple of hours.
Two weeks later he and his wife sat before the news coverage. They started talking about the loss of his son and daughter five years ago and how this was done to honor their memory. That was not true. A robin had just fallen out of the sky one day.
Paul lost his job but that was okay. His wife came and massaged his shoulders when he sat for hours working. She would say not to worry, and everything would be alright. Of course, why wouldn't things?
He stopped eating for a while. It just did not seem that important. Men and women in black and gray blazers and friendly smiles came and asked questions. They wanted to know if he wanted to come along with them, which Paul could hear wasn't a request.
"But what about my birds?" he asked.
"They can join later," the man said, and Paul trusted him that they would.
They never did. But sometimes, outside the window to his new room, he saw robins fly past and fly far, far above.