Hearts and Bones

Yesterday Jacob and I stopped into a store on Mississippi Avenue called Paxton Gate. The store’s tagline is, “Treasures and oddities inspired by the garden and the natural sciences” and it’s filled floor to high ceiling with vintage taxidermied animals, plants, art, geodes, magnifying glasses and bones of all sort. It’s not for the squeamish- there was a container of dried peacock feet on the counter, a box of cow legs with hooves attached and even a dead puppy floating in a jar of formaldehyde for the girl who has everything. Sort of as if the Natural History Museum gift shop was doubling as your local distributor for VooDoo paraphernalia. Jacob bought a human anatomy coloring booking and I came away with a beaker that I fashioned as vase to hold a pheasant feather and two porcupine quills. I was kind of tempted to splurge and spend $50 on the monkey paw so that the next time I go into a work meeting where there is a difficult decision requiring consensus, I can take out my paw and set it in the middle of the table and say, “Let’s let the paw decide.”

Update: Jacob got me a quail skeleton for Mother’s Day! It’s a real special man who hears, “I want new pajamas” and says, “I’ll see those pajamas and raise you a quail skeleton.”