Locals mourning the death of a rare piebald squirrel named Pinto Bean have begun the process to taxidermize the creature. Many sightings of the well-loved distinctive squirrel with unpigmented patches were posted on r/UIUC Reddit before Pinto Bean’s tragic death on Spingfield Avenue last week.
Champaign resident Clark Jackson took the special squirrel’s body to a taxidermist in Bloomington. A post on r/UIUC Reddit provided an update.
Allrighty everyone the deed is done. Pinto has been dropped handed off to Bob to be transferred to his freezer until work is ready to begin.
THE GOOD NEWS: Bob was very professional and thrilled to get the chance to work on a specimen like Pinto. He also said that Pinto was in good shape considering what happened and there was no signs of decomposition. I took a look around his shop while I was there and was quite impressed with the volume of work that Bob has on the walls; everything from White-Tailed deer to Turkey to fish and even a Caribou back in one corner. We chose a good lifelike pose for Pinto to be in that will showcase his unique natural color scheme as well as a small plaque that will have Pinto Bean, October 2022, and University of Illinois engraved on it to be mounted on the chunk of timber that Pinto will be scrambling up. I really hope that everyone will like how it looks.
THE BAD NEWS: While chatting with Bob I asked roughly how long it is going to take for work to complete and he said probably somewhere in the range of 3-4 months. Although archery deer season only recently started Bob has a bit of a backlog to catch up on before he can start on Pinto. While on one hand it’s going to suck to have to wait that long to see this completed, the trade off is that having Pinto unveiled mid-winter will be a spot of brightness in an otherwise dreary season. The other tradeoff is that it is a very good thing that Bob has a backlog. If he’s has people lining up out the door to hire his services it means that he does high quality work and that people trust him, both of these attributes are what we were looking for in regards to someone working on Pinto.
THE EXITING NEWS: On the dive back from Bloomington we received a call from Mark Davis, the coordinator for the Collaborative Ecological Genetics Lab at the Illinois Natural History Survey. He and the Director Eric Schauber want genetic samples taken from Pinto’s liver. Me and my buddy who rode along don’t exactly know what they’re going to do with the tissue samples, but in Mark’s words “We totally need to preserve PB’s genetic legacy”. Take that as you will lol. I for one welcome our upcoming army of Pinto clones.
Rest in peace, Pinto Bean.
Top image from r/UIUC Reddit posted by u/sushi_sunflowers.
