2002-02-26 2:50 p.m.

The HTs. Part 3.

If you don't know anything about the HTs, you may want to start from the beginning.

Ok, so today I got really concerned about the HTs. I figured that I have had them a week now, and I was starting to wonder just how long they would last. I had been considering taxidermy as an option for keeping them with me for as long as possible.

Here you see the glorious, red, swollen horse balls atop my similarly red car. I brought them with me when I went to adjust my clutch slave cylinder. Nothing is as rewarding as working on your car with an extra set of balls.

Now, I am a musician and computer engineer who has lived in Silicon Valley my whole life, so I know nothing about stuffing and preserving dead critters. So, I turned to the internet and found a few phone numbers for local taxidermists.

I called up my good buddies at American Trophy Studio of Taxidermy in San Jose. Now, I felt a little strange calling up and telling this strange man about my testicular issues, but he did not seem fazed by it at all. I guess he must get this sort of thing all the time. He turned out to be very helpful. First of all, he said, I should have only frozen them the second they got removed and not put them in alcohol, since now if he tried to tan them or put them in formaldehyde, that they might have a conflicting chemical reaction and disentigrate! Plus, there was a $100 minimum charge to take them to him, and as he had already explained, the two taxidermy options available to us might not even work. My heart sank. The thought of losing my (other) testicles was really bumming me out. Of course, I bet Horse was even more bummed out, but that is way beyond my control.

Taxidermy Guy and I spoke for a while longer and he finally said that I could keep them in alcohol, as long as there is no air in there, and I seal the jar nice and tight. He said, "I have a grasshopper in vodka that I have had in there for ten years, and it is doing fine."

I felt much better. I topped off the jar with some rubbing alcohol and, with a few strong turns on the lid, sealed it forever.


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