Mementos, Notes, and Fragments

The annual National Taxidermy Championships have thirty-seven categories of awards, some with cash prizes of up to fifteen hundred dollars, and none of them contain the word “crap.” Which sounds like an oversight but is in fact an opportunity, as the arena of crappy taxidermy offers far more room for creative expression, artistic interpretation, and the bending of genres than being hidebound by tradition. However, be advised that trophies for crappy taxidermy consist mostly of internet notoriety, meme-ification, and very very small book contracts.

In 2009, New York apparel designer Kat Su created a Tumblr called Crappy Taxidermy. (Remember Tumblr? Us neither.) It was just as it sounds: a photo archive of misshapen heads, bulging eyes, deformed postures, and creatures most likely to appear in Stephen King’s daydreams, all collected from the darkest and dustiest corners of the internet. Soon followed a Twitter and Instagram under the