Antique

In the mid-1930s, Theodor Geisel was a fledgling author and artist, working as an illustrator for New York ad agencies. His father, superintendent of parks in Springfield, Mass., occasionally sent him antlers, bills and horns from deceased zoo animals. Geisel kept them in a box under his bed and used them to create whimsical sculptures. Above, a replica of Flaming Herring.

Decades before he became a best-selling children's book author, Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theodor Geisel, created a series of sculptures he called his "Unorthodox Taxidermy." Using real horns, beaks and antlers, he fashioned whimsical creatures which look like they jumped right out of his books:
A traveling show of replicas, called "If I Ran the Zoo", has landed at a gallery in Long Island. Today we bring you that story (how else?) in verse:




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