Welcome to the Animalia blog!
Animalia is a store that sells all things animal: art, design, housewares, books, ephemera, clothes, etc. This is the very first blog entry, and today is the very first day we’re open for business. We’re starting small: we’re only online now, and our inventory is mostly made up of friends’ and family’s arts and crafts. Our dreams, however, are big. We hope to have a brick and mortar store someday in the not too distant future, and our product lines will expand and diversify as we go along. Please contact us if you have suggestions of products we should carry.
I started Animalia because I love animals. Shocking reason isn’t it? I’m a graphic designer by day, and since my work life began, I’ve always hoped to find meaning in my work. It’s not easy to find when you’re working for other people to sell their products or ideas or whatever in order to pay your bills. So I’m starting my own thing—selling art and books and anything else that excites me and adds something interesting to the world. The feel good part of the business is that we are donating ten percent of our profits to local wildlife conservation organizations. The other feel good part is creating a cool m’f’in store that is like no other.
Warning: Even more autobiographical content follows
My childhood consisted of one failed campaign after another of trying to get my mother to allow me to have “exotic” animals as pets. This started when I discovered the animal section in the library, and checked out a book about a family in New York that had pet skunks. The book detailed the raccoon-like messes the skunks made and the formidable scratches the owners had sustained. A pet skunk sounded great to me! I wrote a four page essay designed to persuade my mother that a skunk would be a perfectly reasonable pet. I detailed the descenting process, wrote a diet plan, and delivered the wonderful news that skunks, were in fact, legal in Georgia, where we lived. Shockingly, my noble campaign failed. I don’t know what my mom’s problem was.
The next book I checked out from the library was an account of a family in Brazil that started a sloth rehabilitation center in their house, which was at the edge of the jungle. Well, I knew we wouldn’t be able to find a sloth in Georgia, so I thought it was reasonable to suggest that we move to Brazil and live a life like this family—completely dedicated to sloth rehab. My mom made a joke about a Betty Ford clinic for sloths and then brushed me off as usual. Sheesh.
Don’t worry animal lovers! Before you start penning an angry diatribe, know that I am now an adult and I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a wild animal as a pet. But I must admit it was my dearest wish as a child to dress a marmoset in a bonnet or feed a lemur with a baby bottle or paint the toenails of a chameleon. My childhood obsession has translated in adulthood to appreciating animals in their natural habitats and hoping that I can do something to contribute to their well-being.
