The most cursèd home I have ever stayed in

When I was in high school, my cousin got married in the mountains, and that’s lovely. Good for her! She had the charming idea of renting a house for the family members to stay in together for the weekend, and that was a lovely plan in theory.

The problem was the rustic home itself, which the confused maid of honor described as a cross between “a taxidermist’s office, a Renaissance fair, and a flea market.”

Here are some of the things we encountered:

a fox mauling a bird

a bellowing moose next to a portrait of hunting dogs mauling monks

an iron dog riding a unicycle while fishing

a plate depicting a horse beating a man with a hammer

peeakboo dead bear peering from the second story loft

demonic rocking horse

an office for a bear in a hat, hard at work

(he was tame)

decapitated deer in the backyard

bear ottoman

flat cat

jackelope and trompe l’oeil books

pheasant arranged especially to create the illusion that it might swoop down upon the bed’s inhabitant in the night and peck her eyes out

skulls n’ Santa

table 4 elves

reclining gent with slaughtered deer and curious little pup sniffing its corpse

patriotic fire hydrant

It was a weird time.