11 year old me was given a bearskin rug and I hated it because it was a dead animal.
Funny thing though, I'm a butcher now.
I got a realistic-looking stuffed animal mouse as a kid from my grandpa. I don't think it was a taxidermy, but pretty real (or to my 5yo brain). I loved it until it unsurprisingly disappeared after I was being a little dick.
When I was a kid, one of my friends got a stuffed puffer fish for his 10th (?) birthday from an uncle. We klater joked "he's too old for stuffed animals," but IIRC, he loved that thing.
Is this actually a thing anywhere. I haven't heard of anyone calling it anything other than "a taxidermy" or "taxidermied [animal name]"
This is a play on words, you normally wouldn't call it a stuffed animal, but it is technically a stuffed animal. The joke in the comic is that it subverts expectations.
"Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body by mounting (over an armature) or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study."
From Wikipedia
"I have a mounted deer head"
"I have a stuffed raccoon"
I think it's common
Actually yes, know quite a few people who got weird taxidermist cats and raccoons, not necessarily for their birthday bit for other occasions.
Appalachia is a strange place.
Yes, when I was a kid in CA people would describe taxidermied animals as being “stuffed”
I distinctly remember the parks department bringing in “stuffed” owls and cougars and stuff into class during first grade to teach us about the local wildlife. It was rad.