On Sunday, while poking around the internet for news about animals, I came across an article saying U.S. Customs and Border Protection had made an unusual confiscation at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport: a box of giraffe feces. A woman returning from Kenya had packed the little box of poops, was selected by customs agricultural specialists for inspection, and promptly declared her poops. She told the specialists she intended to make a necklace with the giraffe dung, as she had made similar necklaces with moose feces at home in Iowa. Ultimately, specialists from the agency destroyed her smuggled poops. Given the pride with which Customs and Border Protection treats drug busts or counterfeit clothing, this seizure seemed tame. Although this press release was incredibly short, I felt as if I had read an epic tome. There was a deeper story here, with implications that stretched far beyond this one woman and her one box of about a baker's dozen giraffe poops. Was the U.S. government squashing the alternative stylings of a local artist?
Unfortunately the press release detailing the seizure included precious other details or blueprints about the kind of necklace this woman hoped to make. The photo attached to the government press release showed a small white box containing 14 discrete pellets of giraffe poop, looking pretty much like what you would expect giraffe poop to look like, which is to say deer poop but bigger. Strangely, the poop encircles a single brown-and-white shell, perhaps from a giant African land snail, whose presence is totally unremarked upon in the press release. What a fabulous centerpiece to a poop necklace this shell would be! Is no one else seeing her vision?
I also found myself wondering: How does a turd, moose or giraffe, become jewelry? A quick Google landed me on the homepage of Tirdy Works, a small business in Maine run by Mary Winchenbach that appears to sell novelty artworks made of moose turds, such as a No. 2 pencil and Mooseltoe. "Just so everyone knows when we first collect the tirds [sic] we put them in industrial sized dehydrators. Otherwise they would be juizzy and that ain't right!" the website explains, adding that the dehydrated turds go into a "dip station with secret ingredients" before drying out.
Luckily for the Iowa woman, all is not lost; WQAD News recently reported that a moose is on the loose in northwestern Iowa—the third moose reported to be in the state in the last three years. Let us pray that she tracks down that moose, makes her masterpiece, and shares her vision with us all. After all, she is an artist! Isn't this America? God forbid women have hobbies!
