Did You Ever See a Calf Like This?

1916

It Lived Six Months and Could Eat With Either Mouth or Both, Just as It Liked, Until It Caught Cold.

We often see calves with more than their normal share of legs, but did you ever see such a calf as this?

This freak was born on the farm of Charles Brunson, near Dayton, Ohio, and was of Jersey parentage. The little fellow was perfectly healthy and could eat with either mouth or with both, just as it liked. The heads were perfect, and performed every function that such heads would be called upon to do.

For nearly six months the calf lived and seemed to be happy, but grew very little. Then it developed a cold and died, in spite of the efforts of three veterinarians to save it. The calf was mounted and is being preserved as a curiosity.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 7.

President Garfield's Assassin — A "Stuffed" Human Head

1896

All that remains above earth of the irresponsible crank who fired the shot which ended the life of President James A. Garfield is the skeleton, brain and stuffed head, which are now preserved among other ghastly relics in the Army Medical Museum at the city of Washington.

The skeleton was cleaned by the museum workmen immediately after the execution, and has since been kept in a glass case in an out-of-the-way corner of the great National repository of ghastly curios. Each bone is carefully lettered with indelible ink, probably as a means of identification should the skeleton or a portion of it be stolen.

The brain is kept in a large glass jar of alcohol, and, like the skeleton, its presence in the building is known to but few outside of the employes.

The most grewsome memento of the great tragedy of 1881 kept by the museum authorities is the mounted head of Guiteau. Before putting the body in the boiler for the purpose of removing the flesh from the the bones, the head was cut off and the skull denuded of its skin and flesh. After this had been done, the skin was sewed up and stuffed, so that it would look as lifelike as possible, and then pickled in alcohol.

After this ghoulish work had all been completed the flesh was cremated by those having the work in charge, this last act taking place on the night of November 27, 1882. — New York Advertiser.

Interlocked Antlers Make Great Trophy

1896

Curious and Valuable Trophy of a Michigan Hunter

In a taxidermist's window in Madison street a pair of antlered deer heads are displayed. The taxidermist says they form the greatest curiosity ever seen in that line. The antlers are interlocked, and, he says, it is the only pair in existence with the heads well preserved. Other pairs of antlers have been found tangled together but he says it was after the animals to which they belonged had long been dead and nothing but the whitened skeletons remained. The theory has always been that the animals had died thus fighting. The deer of which this exhibit originally formed a part were discovered in combat, and with their horns inseparably tangled.

H. L. Brown, of Albion, Mich., was hunting near Bismarck, North Dakota, November 15 last, when he came upon two Virginia deer bucks locked in a mortal tangle. How long they had been thus he could not say, but it must have been some time, because they had plowed up about two acres of ground in their struggle. They could not run away and Mr. Brown ended their struggle by shooting them. He cut off the heads and sent them to this city to have them mounted as he found them. N. Slotkin, the taxidermist who prepared them, say the horns could only be untangled by breaking them or loosening them from the skull, and this was never done, so they remain as the hunter found them.

The deer were young bucks of about the same age, probably two years old. The taxidermist said if they had been mounted full figure they would have been worth more than $3000. As they are now, he says, the pair of heads is worth $500. They belong to the man who killed them, and who will keep them as a trophy of his rare good lack as a sportsman. — Chicago Chronicle.