AIBU to remove DH's taxidermied rodent?

[msmilton]

NC although it’s specific enough anyone would know it’s me.

I’ll cut right to it, DH one day brought home a taxidermy squirrel and decided to put it on the mantelpiece of our brand new home. I asked him WTF it was and he said it was “art”. The squirrel is wearing little squirrel clothes that look a lot like something he would wear. It’s very odd. On a few different occasions I’ve removed it and hidden it somewhere else because I'm sick of looking at it but he always seems to find it and it always ends up back on the mantelpiece.

We have a DS (12) and an older family-friend who lives with us and is quite a mischievous person. I think DH knows it's me who is hiding it though.

WIBU if I threw it out or hid it somewhere harder for him to find, like the top of a bloody mountain?

I don't want it in my house but it's a sensitive topic for him. I feel like if I tell him how much I hate it he will be hurt but if it just goes missing he'll get over it.

Change tactic op.
Tell dh you love it and put it on his pillow!!.

Put a few tiny black dots, add 3 or 4 each day. After there are sufficient to see from a distance, ask him an innocent question about it so that he looks at it more closely. If he doesn't decide to get rid at this stage, continue for a few more days until there are noticeably more.

Keep looking at it oddly and then ask in a puzzled tone if he just saw something move on it. If this doesn't work then you have to start getting more inventive. Ask someone fishin if you can nick a maggot. Stick the maggot into a crevice on the 'cute rat' somewhere. Say again you can see something moving.

If you can't handle it with maggots use a moth

Ideally you will get him to chuck it rather than you.

Then (evilly) tell him what you did in a couple of years time.

Send it away and make sure DH gets postcards from all its adventures!

I'll have it!

Failing that, say it's got a clothes moth infestation. You can probably fake one with some bits of pulled apart cotton and grains of chia seeds

The squirrel is clothed and wielding a gun?? Oh OP. We're going to need a photo

Now if it's a red squirrel all good but if it's one of them manky grey things...

But if we increase the demand for Manky Grey Squirrel Taxidermy, old Tufty and his mates in his club get more acorns to chomp?

Every home needs zones - not in a George Clarke sense but the main living areas need to be liked by everyone. But then all members of the house need a zone in which they have full freedom to indulge their bad taste to their hearts content

...and this is the reason why, despite never having had possession of a teenaged boychild, my spare room looks and smells rather like a teenaged boy's bedroom. Everywhere else - lovely. But there - bookshelves, posters, toy robots and figurines of monsters and a particularly hideous fetching polycotton leopardprint duver cover on the unusable bed because there are guitars, a drum and MY keyboard dumped upon it.

As soon as anything threatens to creep out of there and clutter up the surfaces, it goes straight back.

Perhaps you could install a dedicated display shelf in DS's room? Somewhere above head level so he doesn't start complaining of it watching him as he sleeps?

Please let us see this specimen.....

@MitziK Tufty! Now that's a blast from the past. 😆😆😆

I would bloody love a squirrel in little clothes 🐿. Send it my way . YABVU.

I really want to see it!

I have a taxidermy squirrel wearing a top hat and sporting a long moustache! I love it! Also deer and crow skulls that I've 'embellished' for lack of a better description! They're just fantastic!

Change the squirrel’s clothes.
Can you sew? Maybe a ball gown?

Maybe I've missed.it (and the point of the thread) but why is DH 'sensitive' about a dead, stuffed, dressed up animal, wielding a weapon?

I will more than happily take it off your hands - don't just throw it away!!! I love quirky stuff like this - I have a big moth pinned in a frame in the living room

Ha! Love the little gun!

OP, you need to think of the manky thing as an opportunity.

Dress it in a tutu, sparkly bra, fairy wings and a tiny blonde wig and hide it somewhere random to jump out at DH. Bonus points if you can get red lipstick on it.

Give it a little chalkboard to hold and leave nice messages for DH from the squirrel - “give me nuts now”, “I licked your peanut butter jar”, etc.

Sit it on the toilet with its tiny squirrel pants around it’s ankles and a tiny squirrel copy of the Daily Mail.

Pull the head off a Barbie, put the head in one hand, tiny knife in the other and lots of red paint or ketchup splattered around.

Get a big taxidermied cat and put the squirrel in the cat’s mouth (or just bits of the squirrel...). You could follow that with a big stuffed Labrador to eat the cat, then a bear to eat the Labrador.

So many possibilities. Don’t you think it would good on the top of the Christmas tree this year? The bear wouldn’t fit...

Is this him, OP?

DH came with a foxes head on a plaque which he rescued from an unloving previous owner. He's apparently been mounted by a famous taxidermist and is reasonably valuable I have no idea what that even means
"Charlie" is mounted over the porch door and has a rather fine array of hats and scarves for all occasions. I've even had to source mothballs to put in his ear. My mother never advised me there would be so many small nuances to a marriage.

Photo or it didn't happen

Make the squirrel a little blindfold and then you won’t feel like it is watching you.

But seriously you can’t bin his stuff, that’s an awful thing to do.

OP at least it isn't this squirrel.
The vampire women in what we do in the shadows is trying to get rid of a hat made from dead witches. She tells her husband that it is cursed.
It actually IS cursed, so not quite the same.

Great thread
Photo please OP!

Is it this one?

I am proper jealous. I need one. And I'm chuckling away at some of these ideas. Dead stuff is interesting, clothed is marvellous. Google froggyland in split, Croatia...utterly fabulous!

Elves I'd blow to pieces however. If I dared. Some cunt left a solar one on my doorstep at Christmas, no idea who. It escaped its packaging after a couple of months. Then fell over a couple of months later. Was standing again in a week. Is now on its side again. I darent touch it, the accursed bastard. I want it stolen or stood on to kill it. I'm not superstitious or woo but the little bastard terrifies me. It has to be a friend doubling down after I demanded to know who had posted me a plastic goat and a Disney dwarf (it's not the same person though).

I'd love a crocodile in a bikini smoking a cigarette in one of those long holders.

It has a gun?! This is outstanding!!!

Now this beauty is right up my street. 😂😂😂

If I had one, I'd be inclined to dress it up like a Barbie doll. It'd even have its own wardrobe. Elf on the shelf spring to mind, it'd be getting up to allsorts of mischief and fuckery, for my amusement.

My (imaginary) partner would be greeted with it daily upon opening his eyes. Oh, the fun I could have...... 😆😆😆😆 however, I'd be scared shitless to touch it, so all these antics will remain in my vivid imagination.... for now. 🤪