Taxidermist turns rat into pencil sharpener
‘I mostly applied what I knew from dressing and plucking game birds at the butcher shop,’ says Jack Devaney
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Your support makes all the difference.An eccentric British taxidermist has revealed his latest creation – a two-in-one pencil case and sharpener made from a rat.
Jack Devaney, 26, buys rodents from pet shop freezers and has turns them into unusual artworks.
The pencil sharpener element of his latest bizarre creation is located at the animal’s rear end.
Mr Devaney, who also makes “animalgamations” where he combines different animals, said he sold the rat for £75.
The artist from Plymouth, Devon, said: “It’s mad how much you can make out of a rat.
“You’ve got heads that you can turn into fridge magnets, legs that you can use to make portable high five machines [and] tails that you can turn into wrigglers.
Mr Devaney has been selling so-called “bad taxidermy“ for five years and uses skills he learned as a butcher.
His first attempted involved stuffing a mouse to impress his girlfriend, who, he said, had not yet been scared away by his hobby.
“I mostly applied what I knew from dressing and plucking game birds at the butcher shop,” he said.
Mr Devaney showcases his work on TikTok, and viral videos have driven sales of both his taxidermy work and his book 50 Ways To Torture A Sloth.
He said rats were his most popular subjects. Mr Devaney’s favourite piece is from his collection Rat People and involves a chef made from the front half of a rat and the lower half of an action figure. It is standing in front of a barbecue made from six mice.
“It can open and close and I suppose you could probably use it for a very small barbecue, though I imagine only the one and it’ll have to be something that cooked quickly as it’d probably catch fire,” he said. “It’s just a decoration either way.”
He gets most his rodents from pet shop freezers where they are usually used as snake food.
But he sometimes buys other taxidermists’ work and re-purposes it.
Asked why he does it, Mr Devaney said: “I’ve never been into art – I just make stuff in the hopes that at some point someone will make some form of time travel machine and I can go back in time to post them on the internet so that I can make myself laugh as a kid.
“I like making stuff that makes me laugh or smirk when I look at it.”
SWNS
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