Fun with Stuffed Animals
Apr. 26th, 2025 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerMy partner and I like to have fun with our stuffed animals. ...Okay, it's mostly me. I enjoy posing them in situations and telling stories about what they're doing, and she mostly finds it funny. Mostly. For example: hawk on her dragon's hoard of beads, hawk on a hoard of coins, Hawkes wine tasting, learning we'd mis-gendered an eagle.
We're not into just any stuffed animals, though; or even the common ones. We have a lot of hawks because they're my partner's namesake. Hawks are hard to find, though. Owls? Slightly easier. But owls suck.
Where can one find stuffed hawks? We keep our eyes open. Sometimes we find a beautiful hawk in the darnedest place. We like to check out visitor centers at national/state parks because that's where we have a better chance of finding such toys— or "liberating a hawk", as Hawk calls it. When we visited Amicalola Falls in Georgia a few weeks ago we saw one or two hawks that we already own copies of... but we saw two other interesting stuffed animals.
For the first time ever I saw an Ent or Treant— or "Enchanted Tree" as manufacturer Folkmanis labels it. I presume they went with that generic name to avoid licensing issues with whatever global megacorps currently own the rights to Tolkien's works and Dungeons and Dragons, though a quick web search I did indicates that the words "Ent" and "Treant" are not trademarked and have been ruled by the courts to be in the public domain.
Folkmanis makes stuffed animals that aren't just stuffed animals but hand puppets. Our first hawk ever was a Folkmanis red tail hawk, a treasured gift that sadly wore out after enough years and had to be sent to the great aerie in the sky. Though we did find another copy of the Folkmanis red-tail hawk on eBay a few years ago.
I had fun checking out this "Enchanted Tree" hand puppet. I made a short video showing how, as I discovered, you can put your fingers in the branches atop the tree's head and move them around. ...And this bad-attitude Treant can give you the finger!
Now, laughing at rude poses with hand puppets wasn't the only thing we did at the park's gift shop. While we did see a hawk or two there and they were ones we already own better versions of, we did find a hawk "accessory"— a snake!
We bought the snake as gift for our hawks to play with.
Here's one of our red-tail hawk toys, "Winter", enjoying his new toy/meal as a reward for waiting patiently in the back of the car as we were out hiking. 🤣
We're not into just any stuffed animals, though; or even the common ones. We have a lot of hawks because they're my partner's namesake. Hawks are hard to find, though. Owls? Slightly easier. But owls suck.
Where can one find stuffed hawks? We keep our eyes open. Sometimes we find a beautiful hawk in the darnedest place. We like to check out visitor centers at national/state parks because that's where we have a better chance of finding such toys— or "liberating a hawk", as Hawk calls it. When we visited Amicalola Falls in Georgia a few weeks ago we saw one or two hawks that we already own copies of... but we saw two other interesting stuffed animals.
For the first time ever I saw an Ent or Treant— or "Enchanted Tree" as manufacturer Folkmanis labels it. I presume they went with that generic name to avoid licensing issues with whatever global megacorps currently own the rights to Tolkien's works and Dungeons and Dragons, though a quick web search I did indicates that the words "Ent" and "Treant" are not trademarked and have been ruled by the courts to be in the public domain.
Folkmanis makes stuffed animals that aren't just stuffed animals but hand puppets. Our first hawk ever was a Folkmanis red tail hawk, a treasured gift that sadly wore out after enough years and had to be sent to the great aerie in the sky. Though we did find another copy of the Folkmanis red-tail hawk on eBay a few years ago.
I had fun checking out this "Enchanted Tree" hand puppet. I made a short video showing how, as I discovered, you can put your fingers in the branches atop the tree's head and move them around. ...And this bad-attitude Treant can give you the finger!
Now, laughing at rude poses with hand puppets wasn't the only thing we did at the park's gift shop. While we did see a hawk or two there and they were ones we already own better versions of, we did find a hawk "accessory"— a snake!
We bought the snake as gift for our hawks to play with.
Here's one of our red-tail hawk toys, "Winter", enjoying his new toy/meal as a reward for waiting patiently in the back of the car as we were out hiking. 🤣
