Head Shopping

For years I have enviously read about other thrifty crafters finding wonderful magical items at thrift stores or yard sales and that never happens to me. Not that it's surprising. I feel thrifting is probably akin to winning the lottery or more realistically, close to winning a small local raffle.  It seems logical that frequent thrifting would increase your odds of success and I don't put in the effort. Over the years my shopping in general has diminished (Ok, except for skeletons.), but my thrifting has trickled to almost none because I just wasn't finding anything.

Last week that all changed when a friend invited me to go thrifting with her. It turns out my wonderful magical item is a taxidermied alligator head.  It was just sitting on a shelf surrounded by knick-knacks waiting for me. It wasn't quite that easy, we went to an estate sale and four other thrift stores that were nearby.  So technically I crammed years worth of thrifting into one day to find this head.

This isn't something I would ever buy "new".  But I think it's safe to say that no one killed this little guy so his head could be sold in a thrift store in a little town in the Midwest.  And my money went to support a charity, not anyone involved in his demise.   Not that any of that will give this alligator comfort, but the least I can do is honor and cherish his little decapitated head.

This is a really good article on "ethical" taxidermy that brings up a lot of interesting points.

And while this was the most unique thing I found, it wasn't my only purchase.  I scored some great deals on items that have been on my crafting wish list for awhile.  So all in all it was a pretty successful trip and it made up for all those years of disappointment.