If you’ve ever locked eyes with a taxidermied animal and felt personally judged, Crap Taxidermy is here to validate that experience. This is the book for anyone who has stood in a museum or roadside curiosity shop thinking, That fox looks like it just remembered it left the oven on.
Crap Taxidermy is a lovingly curated shrine to the absolute lowest rung of animal preservation—where squirrels ride rattlesnakes, lions grin like HR managers, and nothing has the correct number of limbs in the correct places. It is hilarious, slightly macabre, and oddly tender toward creatures who deserved dignity but instead got googly eyes and eternal regret.
This is not a book about death. It is a book about failure. Spectacular, undeniable failure.
Concept & Premise
What is this book, really?
A visual gallery of the world’s most impressively botched taxidermy jobs, assembled to prove that just because you can stuff a squirrel does not mean you should.
Author Kat Su—designer, internet curator, and “reluctant amateur taxidermist”—created the viral Tumblr Crappy Taxidermy long before this book existed. She is not a master artisan sneering from an ivory tower; she is a guide through the ruins, presenting these animals with a mixture of awe, confusion, and gentle disbelief.
The book doesn’t mock from a distance. It marvels. It documents. It lets the evidence speak for itself.
Tone & Humor Style
- Deadpan presentation: The captions treat every monstrosity as if it were a legitimate museum piece. This restraint is crucial—and devastating.
- Visual-first comedy: The jokes land instantly. No setup required. Every page turn is a new jump scare.
- Escalation by accumulation: Each animal is worse than the last, until your brain stops resisting and simply accepts chaos.
- Affectionate absurdity: The tone is never cruel. These animals are tragic, yes—but tragically funny.
The humor doesn’t come from gore or shock. It comes from expressions—wide-eyed panic, misplaced confidence, and the unmistakable look of a creature that knows something has gone terribly wrong.
Themes & Satirical Targets
At its core, Crap Taxidermy gently skewers:
- The seriousness of “traditional” craft culture
- The belief that expertise is optional
- The fine line between folk art and accidental horror
- Humanity’s unshakable confidence in projects it should abandon halfway through
It’s also a quiet celebration of imperfection. These animals may be disasters—but they are memorable disasters. No one forgets the stoned fox.
Giftability
Perfect For:
- The Oddball: Collectors of weird antiques, bones, or inexplicable curios.
- The Hard-to-Shop-For Guy: Usually a dad, brother, or uncle who “doesn’t read” but loves laughing.
- Designers & Artists: People with good taste who secretly love seeing taste go completely off the rails.
- Internet Culture Fans: Anyone who lives comfortably on the strange side of Tumblr, Reddit, or The Bloggess-adjacent universe.
Probably Not For:
- The Squeamish: If dead animals = instant sadness, this is not the book.
- Very Serious Hunters or Taxidermists: Unless they possess elite self-awareness.
- Strict Animal Rights Activists: The animals are long gone, but the humor is corpse-adjacent, and that’s a hard line for some.
This is a White Elephant assassin. A Secret Santa MVP. A housewarming gift that instantly defines the household.
Physical & Visual Design
Format & Feel
A compact hardcover (roughly 6 × 8 inches), 96 pages—perfectly sized for a gift book. It feels solid without being precious, and weird without being cumbersome.
Interior Layout
Clean, image-forward, and confident. Typically one animal per page, minimal captioning, and just enough white space to let the horror breathe. The print quality is strong—you can fully appreciate the unsettling fur textures and accusatory glass eyes.
Coffee-Table Presence
Extremely high. This is a book that demands to be picked up. You can hand it to a guest and watch them cycle through confusion, horror, and helpless laughter in under a minute.
Funniest / Most Memorable Moments
- The DIY Section: A genuine “Stuff Your Own Mouse” lesson by an expert from the American Museum of Natural History—an inspired fourth-wall break that invites the reader to become part of the problem.
- The Stoned Fox: The cover legend. Still undefeated.
- The Smiling Lion: Featuring gums that suggest forbidden knowledge and a grin that does not belong in nature.
- Cowboy Squirrel: A squirrel riding a rattlesnake. Western. Ambitious. Deeply incorrect.
Every spread feels like a punchline delivered without warning.
Overall Verdict
Crap Taxidermy is exactly what it promises—and far better than it has any right to be. It understands its joke, commits fully, and never overstays its welcome. This is a masterclass in visual satire and one of the safest “weird gifts” you can buy.
Who will love it: People who appreciate failure as an art form, internet-era absurdity, and humor that doesn’t need explaining.
Why it works as a gift: Affordable, instantly funny, beautifully produced, and guaranteed to provoke a reaction the moment it’s unwrapped.
Final Thought: Taxidermy. That is crap. And it is glorious.
Where to get it: Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org (USA); Indigo Books & Music (Canada); and Waterstones (UK).