Taxidermy and Other Hobbies You Didn’t Know Your Neighbors Have

Is this the scene next door? 1901 taxidermy studio via Wikimedia.

Sometimes your neighbors’ hobbies are easy to determine–you see them out in the garden, you hear them practicing the bassoon. But sometimes you don’t know what they’re up to until they’re profiled in The Observer and you learn that they’ve got a passion for taxidermy.

When neighbor Divya Anantharaman is not designing women’s shoes, she’s using prize money from winning a TV gameshow about design to “to create a new line of taxidermy-themed footwear: high-heeled bunny slippers with real bunny heads, pumps covered in white mouse skin, that kind of thing.” As a hobby, she can work on some taxidermy projects in her home, but apparently it’s still a secret to others in her building:

THE OBSERVER ASKED MS. ANANTHARAMAN for a demonstration of her craft, and she was happy to oblige. She’s given many such exhibitions; her friends are “very into it,” she said, and the guy she’s dating doesn’t mind her hobby a bit. She selected the larger of the chilled birds from the baggie and placed it on a heart-shape paper plate decorated with Snow White and Princess Jasmine. She gets a lot of her supplies from the dollar store, she explained….

…Taxidermy is heavily regulated. Ms. Anantharaman had to pass on a hawk once, because it’s illegal to take one home in New York. To work as a commercial taxidermist, she’d have to get certified; as a hobbyist, she can stuff as many small creatures as she likes.

She removed the bird’s guts to the princess plate and padded down the hall to the trash chute. She walked back quickly: “Shit, somebody was out there.”

So what’s the most interesting hobby you’ve discovered a neighbor had?