Dead Things: Or Why Poompy Loves Me

If you've ever been to my Flickr account, you know my fascination with dead things. Sadly, since I've gotten kind of used to living in NYC, I've stopped carrying my camera with me everywhere I go, so now I regularly miss good photo opportunities with the city's beautiful dead. Which just drives me nuts. I'll be walking down the street and I'll see a squashed rat and I'll stop in my tracks, squat on the pavement for a closer look, dig through my purse for my camera and then curse myself for leaving the camera at home. And then a moment passes as I'm squatting on the sidewalk hovering over the rotting carcass of some poor creature, where I seriously consider putting the thing in my pocket so that as soon as I get home I can take a picture of it. Or, if the thing is REALLY dried out, perhaps I can bring it home and just ... save it. Maybe to put in a frame at some later date*. How cool would that be? I think. But then the practical side of me (yes, I have one too) takes over and I realize how upset Poompy will be if he finds out I've stuck this dead rat or pigeon or sparrow or whatever in my pocket and brought it into our tenement. So I sigh, wistfully, and walk away, knowing I'll never have the opportunity to photograph that particular dead thing ever again.

A couple of weeks ago Jen brought Sexy Sadie into work with her for the afternoon. Sadie is a good little doggy, so she has free run of the spa when she's there. A few hours into the work day, I hear Jen screaming in the back. Before I have a chance to see what's going on, she's running up front with Sadie in her arms. "Oh my god! Is my dog's face OK? You'll never believe what just happened!" Sadie's face looked fine, so I follow Jen into the back room where there are two sprung mouse traps on the floor - one of them with a dried out little mouse in it. Apparently, Jen had gone in to check on Sadie and found her crunching on something which turned out to be the mummified mouse in the trap. (Jen was worried that the empty trap had sprung on Sadie's face, but we've since decided that it probably wasn't empty when Sadie found it. If you know what I mean.) So here I am, at work, with a lovely dead thing and no camera. I took a deep breath, looked at Jen and said, "Can I take it home?"

ÅND SHE DIDN'T MIND. You have no idea how thrilled I was to be able to take that little dead mousy home. We put him in a biohazard bag (it was the only plastic bag with a seal that we had around) and put that in a Dean & Deluca bag. I was worried Mr. Mouse would just crumble up if I stuck him loose in my purse. I had a lot going on that night, so I wasn't able to photograph him right away. Instead, he stayed in his baggies on top of my fridge. Until Poompy found him.

We're in the bitchen** getting ready for bed when Poompy asks me, "Hey, what's in this Dean & Deluca bag? Did you get cupcakes?" And because at the core of my being I'm actually quite cruel, I respond, "It's a treat I picked up for you. Open it!" He opened the bag, looked inside, looked up at me, grinned, put the bag back on top of the fridge and said, "I should've known," And that was that.

Does that mean I have permission to bring home dead things?



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*In an envelope inside a box on the top shelf of a closet in the tenement is a dead frog that my parents sent me in the mail about ... oh gee, I guess that's nearly two years ago now. He's beautifully dried and quite gorgeous, really. I'm just waiting to find the time (and money) to bring him to a shop to have him framed. I think he'll look really nice in one of those glass, shadow-box type deals. A real conversation-starter, you know?

**You didn't forget about our bitchen, did you?