I think it was last year when we drove to Central Oregon for Christmas with my family that I bent to the pressure of the family to listen to an audio book.  I’m a listen-to-music-while-driving type of person, but they love listening to audio books – so I was overridden.  I decided I got to choose the book, so I chose “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” by Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess.

Great choice in terms of entertainment value.

Bad choice because it’s hard to see the road while laughing so hard you are crying.

She is quite the storyteller – something you get when reading her blog, but listening to her read her book gives you a whole new level of appreciation.  She tells it in the book, but posted it here first.  Never read her – go read this first – the story of the giant chicken.

One of the things you learn in the book – and see on her site – is that she has quite the appreciation for taxidermy – specifically bad taxidermy.  Because, well, she likes to make it better.  This is a good sampling of things she does as it this and this.

I guess I understood her urge to decorate her animals.  But then again, my dad had a mounted Canadian goose that he used to put a Santa hat on for Christmas – so I guess I never found it odd. What I loved and appreciated was the extent she took it too.

For the past week, I have been eyeing this little wrapped box on the mantle.  And each time I go to touch it, G would yell “don’t touch it – you’ll break it”.  So I would leave it there and wander away wondering “what the fuck is in that box?!?”

Yesterday morning, I was allowed to open it but only under his supervision because I was either going to break it or “lose something”.  Imagine my surprise when I found this:

Meet Madam Lulu duPoulet – a feisty chick with a top-hat.  Because she has a top hat, I decided she had to be addressed formally – Madam, formal.  I decided Poulet because that’s french for chicken and she seems like a french kind of chick. Though, I have since discovered when confirming the spelling that in slang “poulet” means:

Which made me laugh because without realizing it, I made her a true Madam.  And given how she’s only wearing a top-hat, well, it seems to fit just fine.

While I was admiring my snazzy chick, G told me all about his experience buying it.  They would gift wrap it but were truly afraid, I would ruin it by shaking it, bumping it, or simply unwrapping it wrong.  Clearly they did not want to get an upset person in their store where they would have to say “we warned you”.  So he had to swear to protect it with his life – which is why he would barely let me even look at the box wrong.  Like the taxidermy place was going to come hunt him down or something.

But it was worth it.

Right now, she is acting as centerpiece to the table.

But she will probably get added to the weird mix in the living room – next to my garden gnome on the mantle (a past gift) or near the solid cement elephant sitting on the floor next to the fireplace.  Or next to Buddha.  It’s hard to say.

Regardless, I like her.  My own little taxidermy chick.