Hunting a killer (and stuffer)
Jasmine Garcha (she/her) // Arts and Culture Editor
Kyla Seguiban (she/her) // Illustrator
Brodie Khan* describes taxidermy as, “the ultimate form of recycling,” and a way to, “get in touch with your primal urges that you can’t take out on your spouse.”
The interest in taxidermy spurred among Khan and her friends in high school from the fur industry’s lack of ethics and sustainability. She describes the desire to perform ethically, “by making the pests in our local neighbourhood and homes into funky—well, not really funky, it was quite ugly, actually—clothing articles, but to high schoolers, it was pretty groovy.” This interest lived on in Khan due to the surplus of rats in her building, which she describes as, “a very old and decrepit home provided by the B.C. provincial government.”
The rats prevail despite each resident owning a cat, many of which have gained too much weight to hunt anymore. So, Khan picked up the mantle. “I build a holy land of cheese and they come,” she says, “and I reign my wrath supreme.” Not wanting to waste the organic material, she continued to craft.
Khan is motivated by the possibility that rats, she says, like spiders, may, “gain a higher degree of sentience,” and, “try and revolt against us, because as a species we are destroying every ecosystem on the planet. So, we gotta repress those little rebellions.” She adds, “That sounds so genocidal.”
Ruminating on this sentiment, Khan says, “I like to think that they’re the colonists, so that when I shoot them up with a BB gun, I can refrain from feeling remorse.” She mentions the desire to keep the rats as pets, while ultimately understanding the reality of the matter as they carry diseases and reproduce rapidly.
“Obviously, they have to die anyway,” she says sadly, before following up with, “They must die, those filthy little fucks.” When her seemingly sudden switch in attitude was questioned, she asserted, “I do not take glee in this, my friends. My brothers.”
Often, Khan seems to break character after saying something morally questionable. When asked if she feels mercy for the rats, Khan answers, “No,” and laughs before suddenly expressing guilt. Painfully recalling the times that she has drowned a few, she questions her methods and considers using high dosage painkillers, but notes that she would like them to be conscious to eat the cheese that she sets out for them before their death. “I like them to have a last supper,” she explains. She also mentions that she has encountered owls in her basement, and poisoning the rats could potentially poison the owls or other natural predators.
After removing the internals and bones from the rats, Khan disposes of the entrails, mentioning that she prefers not to leave them out for wildlife, “because you don’t really know what type of toxins the rats have been exposed to.” The bones are given to a friend who collects them. “When my cat died, she even went to the grave and removed all the bones without my permission,” Khan adds.
She went on to describe one of her creations, a pencil case opening from the rat’s posterior to its mouth, “so it opened up like a blood eagle which is an execution method from the vikings in Scandinavia.”
Khan touches on the effect of this hobby on her personal relationships, describing the desire to be feared by her male friends. She reminisces on a time she sought revenge on a man who sexually harassed her, roping her fearful friends into the endeavour. One proceeded to send an uncharged grenade to his house, and another sent a box of silicone feet. They then sold him on Craigslist.
“This is just the average Thursday for me,” she says, casually explaining that she listed a man for sale on Craigslist with his full name, home address and phone number. It was Friday at the time of this interview, during which she also revealed that she had smoked three grams of marijuana prior, and profusely apologized six times throughout the half-hour duration.
Further describing her morbid crafts, Khan explains that if she ever had a limb severed, she would want to taxidermy it. She also mentions the desire to eventually taxidermy her mother postmortem. She went on to say that a friend has recently decided to be circumcised, adding, “I think he’s going to give me his foreskin so I can make a bracelet. […] It has to be some good macramé.” After pausing in thought, she simply says, “Hm.”
“I’m not a psychopath, contrary to popular belief,” Khan insists, later adding, “I’m really ethical.”
*Brodie Khan is a pseudonym to maintain anonymity