SheWalksSoftly

Phil Are Go! posted a series of images from a 1946 issue of Popular Mechanics that featured behind the scenes taxidermy. The captions containing the *ahem…cough, cough* “reproduced text” are hilarious.

“Taxidermy” comes from the Latin “taxi”, meaning “yellow car for short term hire” and “dermy”, meaning “having nothing to do with”. Since the dawn of time, Man has been fascinated with killing animals, shoving lots of things into them, and then staring at them. Until the creation of the first museum, these men were just sick weirdos. Now, they are the archivists of the miracle of life, through the glory of death.

The journey of taxidermy begins with the animal being lightly killed. In this photograph, we see a Chimpanzee receiving his “contribution to history injection”. The animal’s last meal may consist of beer or Tang, depending on whether he was a jerk and bit somebody.

I’m still laughing at the phrase “lightly killed” (though it’s no laughing matter, of course).

Since I can’t take credit for the writing, I’ll let you read the rest here.

Thank you, Bettie!

This entry was posted on September 8, 2014 at 5:53 pm and is filed under humor, taxidermy, vintage with tags humor, taxidermy, vintage, vintage print. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.