Road kill used for Badger kilt sporrans
4 August 2010 - BBC News
A taxidermist is using wild animals killed by the bloodsports and farming
industry (as well as those claimed to have been knocked down and killed on roads) to make
sporrans. Controversial Kate Macpherson, of Beauly, Inverness-shire, says she has collected badgers, foxes,
deer and stoats from verges. She claims that she uses animals that would otherwise have lain rotting by the
side of a road.
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Mother of three Ms Macpherson claimed to have been "inspired" by the the badger skin sporran worn by
her father's Army regiment. Her sales pitch is along the lines of: "If I didn't pick up these
dead animals they would be rotting in a
ditch. I'm creating something useful from them rather than allowing their beauty
to be wasted." She added: "But they're not for everybody I admit. People seem to either love
them or hate them." Her own web-site says she makes sporrans from
crocodiles, goats, horses and sheep; and you don't really see these laying dead
in a ditch in the UK.
Not surprisingly, Macpherson has faced complaints from animal welfare groups. One person, who saw her stand at the Scottish Game Fair in Perthshire,
were well within their rights to call
the police who sent an officer to see her and how she uses the fur and face
masks of protected mammal species to make sickeningly expensive purses. Animal welfare campaigners have
rightly criticised the pathetic-looking product, claiming it
will lead to the deaths of other animals. Lynda Korimboccus, head of the
Scottish Animal Rights Alliance, said the use
of the animals - even if they were killed on a road - was wrong. She added: "Using a dead animal for clothing perpetuates the idea that that's
what animals are for. That will lead to the deaths of other animals which will
be killed to satisfy the market for fur."
Badgerland say: Macpherson claims that if
she did not pick these animals up they would be rotting in a ditch and that she
is creating something useful rather than allowing their beauty to be wasted. The
beauty of an animal's fur is when the animal is wearing it; not when it has been
cut from the animal to be used and abused for nothing other than a pathetic
fashion statement. When people wear fur across their shoulders or a glass-eyed badgers face
to draw attention to their inadequate wedding tackle region it just demonstrates that they can
probably be outwitted by their own pets! With all the hyped-up snappy working
terriers and lurchers you see in the countryside, you wouldn't really want to
put a foxes face across your groin - it's just asking for an eye-watering
injury.
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