Hopalong Hollow....

Hopalong Hollow, where the Blueberries grow sweet, and the moss feels soft beneath your feet.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The unfortunate demise of the chipmunk

The guilty party, doing jail time. 
    A naughty puss has brought about the untimely death of a dear
little chipmunk and has deposited the poor creature on the stairway. She is now pouting on the porch, as I have seen fit to deprive her of any further satisfaction from this act of , of..... hmmmm what do you label the wanton murder of little darling creatures perpetrated by the feline species? fuzzycide? tweetycide? Well, whatever it is, those cats do get away with murder, no doubt about it. .

     Now, I have another little body to dispose of. Birds, squirrels, tiny srews and mice have all had proper burials around here. After all, it would be so unseemly to do anything less. But then I had a thought, why should this little feller have died for naught? I remembered that Tasha Tudor said in an interview that she  kept similar unfortunate victims in her freezer. She said she had a whole freezer full of little mice! When she needed a life-like model (forgive the pun) to create a painting, she would just pop on over to the icebox and get one.




Working from "life"
     Well, my goodness! I've been collecting bug bodies for ages to use in my paintings, so why not? If it's good enough for Tasha, it's good enough for me! It just so happens, I need a little chipmunk model for the  book I'm working on....
      I told the man of the house, "Dearest, there is a little chippy in the freezer, he's in a marked baggy." Dearest says,"Not next to the ice cream, I hope." He is so understanding.
He will live on in my book, this little chipster.
    Now, here's the question, when I need to "use" my little model, do I:
      A. Thaw him out and then put him in the proper position?
      B. Put him in position and draw as quickly as I can before he               thaws out?
      C. How many times can he be thawed and refrozen? What
           about freezer burn, yikes!
      D. Should I just take him to a taxidermist? Naw.
                Oh dear, I wish I knew how Tasha did it.

4 comments:

  1. Sheila @ Rolling Meadows OrchardJuly 14, 2010 at 8:39 AM

    Yeeks! :o) Bodies in the freezer!

    ReplyDelete
  2. they probably have freezer burn by now!

    ReplyDelete
  3. They get stiff after a few hours of death, so you might want to try and pose him now before that happens, as for freezing and thawing.........I would take a few pictures of him, and then bury the poor little thing in the garden.

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