It's Been a Minute!

I wasn’t sure this year I would be able to pull off a menagerie, but I am glad I tried, and I feel particularly triumphant about succeeding. Since my last menagerie, there has been a return move to Montana, failing hands, two hand surgeries with less than optimal results, a sprained ankle, a bad smoke/fire season, and excessive heat in an unairconditioned, old, log house. But there has also been a lot of fun in rediscovering places and renewing a lot of joyful habits, including carving. There is still room for improvement, but I am well on my way to saying, “And now my life is complete”.

It has been a journey, and I introduce to you the 2026 Menagerie set in the late 1700s as a nod to our 250th anniversary as united states. And hopefully, after the next round of upcoming surgeries, this will not be my last set of carvings. I feel I have another round of stories still in me! 

Martin Virgil

Dappled grey Martin Virgil is named for both past and present. His lineage includes a rather renowned bareback horse, Virgil, who was raised on the Blackfeet Indian reservation near East Glacier where I spent considerable time in my youth. It is possible he is related to a horse I knew and loved, “Doc”, a slightly dappled, huge, appaloosa. Martin’s first name comes from an interview this year with a gracious newscaster, John Martin, showing the initial carving of Mr. Virgil, and giving me a lovely introduction back to Montana. Martin Virgil’s story is titled “From the Horse’s Mouth”, an old idiom indicating the source being the most reliable, primary, authoritative word of the day.  Martin has a solid confidence in his early indigo-dyed wool suit, woven smoking hat, and wool vest proudly displaying buttons from an early oil-pull tractor that initiated his retirement from farming.

Warda Bahirah

Warda is Moorish, a fashionable figure in Spain in the 1700s with mysterious Bedouin origins. Her mother had earned a place of honor in her desert herd and was released after weaning Warda, her 5th daughter. They journeyed together across North Africa and found themselves living a life of luxury in southern Spain where “orientalism” was popular fashion for the well-heeled. Loose trousers, called seroual, silk scarves, and heavy jewelry mark her heritage as well as her status.  She is a bit of a culinary expert and frequently can be found transporting unusual delights such as sage and juniper for her traditional stews.

Marx P. Lotor

The song “Yankee Doodle” was originally a derogatory song written by a British doctor in 1755 to mock the Americans they considered to be “hicks” and pretenders. “Doodle” eventually shortened to “dude”. A “dandy” was also often used to describe someone arrogant or conceited, displayed by the frippery in their clothing. Later on, it came to mean someone elegantly dressed.  Over time, Dudes came to represent people coming to the American West to stay on guest ranches, and they were usually a bit overdressed in western costume, looking “dandy”. It still happens!  Marx descended from a dandy who created one of the first ready-to-wear clothing companies in the United States in the late 1800s, Marx-Made Clothes, and is wearing a pair of pants specially made to be a male child’s first pair of pants. In the 1800s, male children often were dressed the same as female children up to a certain age. Marx has a romantic side and is an avid reader, carrying a copy of Romeo and Juliette in his satchel.

Brady Pilosa

Did you know that the first wooden plate dentures were made over 400 years ago in Japan? This was not what George Washington had, but he was wearing dentures by the 1780s due to disease and poor medical treatments, and Brady Pilosa needed a set to give him some teeth. It is possible they both had beeswax molds made for their palate to receive teeth. Brady’s teeth are wood, George Washington’s were NOT!  Brady carries some pruners to keep his teeth in their best shape. Did you know that sloths don’t actually have canines, but the shape of their mouths opening and closing to feed causes their teeth to sharpen and appear canine? In the 1700s, sloths were greatly misunderstood, vilified, and mischaracterized right down to their name. We now know they are not mistakes of nature or the terrible monsters their discoverers described. 

Martha and Molly Marmota

All groundhogs are marmots, but not all marmots are groundhogs. Martha has journeyed with baby Molly slung over her back to visit her western marmot cousins in the Rocky Mountains, encountering cultural differences from her eastern whistlepig, woodchuck roots. Martha is a stoic pragmatist, quiet and solitary, while her drama queen cousins are overly loud and quite social. She found herself outraged quite often. She dressed in her best homespun ginghams, topped with her handiest needlework collar and kept Molly’s prodigious ears covered in a crocheted bonnet, but, frankly, she is just happy to enjoy them at home, minding her own business.

Solomon Lacerta

He’s a tight-lipped fellow, but I hear-tell he’s a clever sort who likes to read, even if he speaks with a forked tongue.  The only book I had in his size was a tiny Bible, and since he is a traveler, perhaps he took it from a hotel room. Did you know that the tradition for putting bibles in hotel rooms began in November 1908 in the Superior Hotel in Superior, Montana? The Gideon organization started in 1899 by two traveling salesmen and one of them took a suggestion by the hotel’s owner, a woman, to put 25 bibles in her hotel’s rooms. Solomon is a monitor lizard ( purportedly, a fairly smart creature), thus carnivorous, and he particularly favors insects, which is why he sports a lapel pin of a bee and wears a bird feather attached to his hat band. He’s a natty dresser, coordinating his blue coat and diamond-patterned, feedsack shirt with his tongue and wearing soft, silent slippers on his feet to quiet his toes when he hunts!

Hernshaw “Blue” Ardea

Great blue herons, ardea herodias, were classified by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 work, “Systema Naturae” in which he endeavored to give us a logical system for classifying the things we found in nature. “Hernshaw” was an old English folk term for these herons. I gave him a gentlemanly walking stick and a classic cap accepted by all social classes for a couple of centuries in casual wear at home or working situations. His is wool, but they often would have been made of linen. His “tail” is depicted by a cascade of old, detachable shirt cuffs from back in the day when these dressier items were not always attached to a permanent garment.