It isn't fun being stranded from my husband who lives in the US, but an equal tragedy is that I’m stranded from my cochin taxidermy rooster. Here’s a story about how I tried & failed to bring him into Canada, and why pets don't make for good taxidermy. (: @anna_pidgorna)

A few months ago, when I was packing up my life in Austin to move back to Vancouver, I phoned up the Canadian government to ask how to bring my taxidermy rooster into the country.

After being transferred from agency to agency, rep to rep, an official inquired about the provenance of this rooster and whether I had certification proving he was professionally stuffed.

I told him Little Jerry was a wedding present from my sister. She’d bought him off a guy on Craigslist who’d kept the bird in his Philly basement for years. There was no certificate of any kind.

I also felt the need to tell him that Little Jerry is the ideal companion. Always there yet never annoying.

The official said that a lack of certification meant the “specimen’s” fate would be up to a border guard’s discretion. No way Jose. So I took the rooster and rode a bus to the edge of a highway to a taxidermy shop.

W/o giving away identifying details: the owner looked like anyone might look after decades of self-isolating with only coyote tail keychains & squirrel beer holders for company. Verdict on whether or not Little Jerry was a professional job: “Of course. Or you’d smell it.”

He scribbled a little note on a receipt attesting to this fact. But the next morning, I feared that the little note wouldn’t suffice.

I needed something official, government-worthy. I rode a bus to another taxidermy shop on the edge of another highway. It was packed with gleaming veiny deer molds. This owner was hip and sociable. Let’s call him Chad.

Chad had an air of confidence—a man who saw taxidermy as the Next Big Thing, like craft beer. When he asked why I’d received a stuffed rooster as a wedding present, I told him I’d once won a middle school speech competition. My topic: “Taxidermying Your Pets: The Pros and Cons.”

“Only cons,” Chad said without a blink. “We don’t taxidermy people’s pets. Not anymore.” He went on to impart the kind of wisdom I wish I had back in grade 7:

If you shoot a deer, he said, you haven’t seen it up close. You haven’t spent years living w/ it, sleeping beside it. So you can never get a pet’s face—so familiar to its owner—just right. Make the eyes too droopy? The owner will scream at you for making Bubbles look stoned.

The only way to get the face right—the soul right—is if the pet owner is right there with you in your kitchen as you scrape the innards out of Bubbles.

(Also, there aren't molds for cats & dogs, like there are for deer, bulls, etc. You have to stretch the skin over rabbit/fox/weasel molds, and the results aren't always satisfactory.)

And yet, the taxidermy shop still gets pet requests. Once, Chad found a grey hound in their 24-hour-drop-off freezer. To make into a rug.

Another time, before his no-pets rule, Chad got a request for a European mount of a cat. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say this required hours and hours of boiling.

Back to Little Jerry. Chad promised he’d write a certification letter, on letterhead and everything. But with the cross-border move and the pandemic, I’d dropped the ball on following up. I’m not even sure if Chad’s still in business.

So the rooster remains in the US with my husband. One day, I hope we can reunite again. And with the husband, too. The end.

@Kristen_Arnett, this taxidermy certification adventure made me think of you.