Hey, if you’ve bought something from my Redbubble shop, like, ever–thank you. You’ve helped me buy groceries or gas or takeout lately, and I really appreciate it. I didn’t expect very much to come of selling stickers on the Internet, but in the past couple of months I made enough pocket money from them that I felt like I could buy a frivolous thing or two for myself. So, yeah, hold that thought.

Last fall at a meeting of Tape Club (which is, by the way, exactly what it sounds like: a gathering of people playing entertainment roulette with a trash bag full of unlabeled VHS tapes) I encountered an unusual object.

On the bedside table in the home of our host was a stuffed gorilla (sort of) with the head of a rooster. It bore a tag that said, “My name is Bernard. I love to eat corned beef sandwiches.” It radiated chaotic energy.

Since I was rapidly losing interest in our current tape (an hour-long instructional video about excel spreadsheets), I decided to look up Bernard’s origins as stated on his tag. I found the website of a creative Young Frankenstein, a local middle schooler who specializes in “giving homeless stuffed animals a new life!” by decapitating them and sewing their heads onto other decapitated stuffed animal bodies. I got terribly distracted from the Excel spreadsheet video looking at her amalgamated creatures and their names and occupations.

For example.

There are a lot of them and they are all great. My favorite by far was a creature named Denise, a vulture/cat hybrid who mysteriously bore no description. I considered buying her, but I didn’t know if spending ten dollars on a weird object was the right decision, financially, so I put off my purchase. After a few days of thinking it over I assured myself she would find a home eventually.

Last week I ran into the person who had hosted Tape Club so many months ago, and it reminded me of my encounter with Bernard, and also of Denise. I went home that evening (fine, it was closer to 3:00am) and found that she was miraculously still listed on the Wild and Wacky Pets website. I could think of no better way to support local business while also getting a bizarre gryphon-like creature (which was especially fitting) in the process.

She arrived in the mail two days ago and frankly I was even more delighted to receive her than I was my recent shipment of earthworms, which is saying something (perhaps it is saying a lot of things, at least about me and my interests).

Anyway, this is Denise and she loves baklava and showtunes.