Wombats

We have a substantial collection of stuffed animals. Penguins, of course and sheep, but there are also a handful of exotics.  They make the ideal house pets for people who travel too much and are never sure what to do with living beings.  I am very tactile and enjoy holding them.  There is a resident sheep in my bedroom - Patrick and I have been through so much.    

We have a Dodo, from natural history museum at Oxford.  Dodos went extinct in the mid 1600's.  A lot of drawings and paintings exist, the last taxidermied specimen was tossed in a bonfire about 100 years ago by a museum employee who thought it was just another dusty mouth eaten old thing.  The charred remains are treasured by the museum, little more than a beak and feet.   

We have a life size California Condor chick, that my mother declared the "ugliest thing she had ever seen."  Jay has been pushing for psychotherapy for Fluffy for sometime.  

Ah the picture above.  A few years ago we were on a grand circle tour of Lake Erie.  We took a couple of the kids with us, a penguin or two, and our Rodney, our Wombat.  When we were checking into the hotel in Niagara Falls Rodney didn't want to stay in the car.  So I tucked him under my arm and away we went.  Doorman held the door open, did a double take and said, "this is Canada, your beaver is very welcome here!"  I pointed out the short fluffy tale and explained that Rodney was a wombat not a beaver.  I bet that doorman still remembers the guy with a wombat tucked under his arm.  

You don't have to be crazy to be us, but it would help.  

What is the oddest thing you have carried into a hotel?