Inn Seeks New Home for Dead Residents

Nov 26, 9:28 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's famed Jamaica Inn, enshrined in novelist Daphne Du Maurier's romantic novel about Cornish smugglers, is looking for a new home for some unusual residents -- several thousand stuffed animals in various poses.

The collection, amassed more than a century ago by Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter and moved eventually to the tourist attraction on the edge of misty Bodmin Moor in the mid-1980s, is being put up for sale to make way for paying guests.

Prospective buyers can bid for groups of stuffed kittens, frogs, mice, rabbits and squirrels taking tea, playing musical instruments or in school, British newspapers reported on Tuesday.

At the time when an exhibition of flayed human corpses is attracting major audiences in east London, the collection could offer a fluffier if equally eccentric anthropomorphic take on the world.

"Figures spoken about vary from 750,000 pounds to one million and even up to two million," Jamaica Inn owner Kevin Moore was quoted as saying in The Times newspaper, adding that the space would be turned into accommodation for living humans.

"We expect that being able to provide these facilities will generate a lot more money for the business," he added.

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2002

Answers

Stuffed dead things, in poses yet! Ugh!

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2002