Great-Uncle Barry’s Pangolin
"It's supposed to be lucky to see a pangolin. They're s'posed to be magic."
"It wasn't lucky for the pangolin; Great-Uncle Barry stuffed him."
"Did he get leprosy?"
"No. Why?"
"You can get leprosy from armadillos."
"It's a pangolin, not an armadillo."
"Yeah, but they're related. I think you have to butcher the armadillo and eat it raw, or keep it as a pet and sleep with it, or share a toothbrush, or something, though."
"Ew. He stuffed it. He didn't eat it. And he didn't share a toothbrush with it, not like Aunt Jen and Bootsie."
"How'd you know? He could have. Back in the day, lots of naturalists ate what they killed, and just kept the skin and bones. Plus, pangolin meat's hot on the black-market today. That, and their scales."
"Again, ew. That'd be like chewing on Great-Uncle Barry's horny old toenails!"
"Pretty much. Mad-King George had a coat of armor made of pangolin scales. I saw it on a school trip to this museum in Leeds."
"That'd be like wearing Uncle Barry's old toe-nails."
"To be fair, they were decorated with gold-"
"Fingernail polish!"
"Shut up. It was cool. It looked more like a coat of dragon scales than anything. Probably wouldn't have done much good in a battle, though."
"Probably just for show. Maybe he never even wore it. It's not like anybody would have let him near a fight, anyhow. People give kings all kinds of weird presents. I heard the Queen has a sword made of shark teeth."
"The royals don't want to offend anyone, so it all goes on display, they can never throw anything out."
"Bet their storage rooms look like Uncle Barry's house on steroids. He never threw anything out. You don't know how much we had to go through before we even got to the pangolin. You remember that old box he kept his medals in? We almost tossed them out with all the toenail clippings he'd piled on top, but the box felt too heavy. I think he must have gotten kinda loopy. Suspicious somebody would steal his medals."
"Don't let me get like that."
"It's probably too late. --Ow!"