A Vicious Act

Joel's labmate Janet made him a big foam fish out of upholstery foam as a gift. He plans to hang it above his desk in the lab. It's all complete, except that Janet didn't have time to get eyes for the fish, so Joel said that he would take care of it. This is what led he and I to drag our sorry strep-throat butts out of bed on Sunday and down to Michael's at South Edmonton Common to buy some eyes.

After much searching, all we could find were googly eyes. We scoured the creepy doll-making aisle, with all of its iron on faces and bags of curly hair, but to no avail. As we were getting ready to give up, I came up with the brilliant plan of going to Value Village and buying a stuffed animal to harvest the eyes from. Joel reluctantly agreed and we headed to the nearest VV. The foam fish is actually huge, so we needed some pretty big eyes to complete it. The only stuffed animal we could find with the right kind of eyes that were big enough was a soft, plushy hippopotamus with a hippo baby clinging to its side.



Joel absolutely could not bear the thought of viciously tearing the eyes out of a momma hippo, so I volunteered, on the condition that I would blog about it and force him to look at the pictures.


I was quite surprised about how bad I actually felt when I started the operation. I mean, it was just a stuffed animal, but the eyes looking at me were so disturbing.

It didn't help much that the intact baby was looking at me with imploring, beady little eyes as it clung to its mother's side.

The result of the operation is below. Further cleanup to follow, and perhaps a picture of the completed foam fish.
Conclusion: eye removal from stuffed animals is not for the faint of heart.