“Honey, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, I’m getting rid of the rowing machine in the living room. The bad news is, I’m replacing it with the preserved remains of Trigger, which I just bought for $200,000.”
I guess we’ve all had that conversation with our wives.
You can have that conversation now if you like, because Trigger is on the auction block at Christie’s, with a low, low estimated price of $100,000-200,000. He’s part of a big spread of Roy Rogers memorabilia.
Trigger is a one-of-a-kind item, all right. I must salute the Associated Press for getting the phrasing right in its story, calling this Trigger’s “preserved remains” — a wonderfully vague phrase. In the early days of Who2 we got at least one letter complaining that Trigger was not “stuffed” (as I think we had it) and not “mounted” either. His skin is stretched over an artificial frame, which makes him something else entirely.
“Dead,” I think they call it.
(Hot tip: Trigger stars in our classic loop Seven Horses of Highly Effective People.)