Paris, France – Window Displays

I saw this in front of a toy store in Paris. It’s a toy model of the Tour de France, with bikers racing around and around the Arc de Triomphe and I think Montmartre.

And in their last circle going around the Arch, I thought it was cute that one of the bikers fell (in the background). It’s silly that one of the bikers is like “Oh no! It was the last stretch! Why did I have to fall down? I’m out of the race!”

We’d heard about Deyrolle, the famous Paris taxidermy shop from TV shows and books, but I don’t remember visiting it before. My wife thought it might be gruesome, but I knew it would be fun. In the store, animals, birds, and even bugs are re-stuffed and put on display as art objects. Some of the animals are staged to look lifelike, but others are posed in surreal situations that would never exist in nature.

On the day I took this photo, the store was closed. The grates were down, but in their window they had one of their more striking pieces, a spotted wild cat, sitting up at attention. The store had labeled it as a leopard, but The Kid, who knows everything about wild cats, noticed that is was mislabeled, and was in fact, a cheetah. (Apparently the black fur on the back of the ears, and the stripes along the face are dead giveaways, according to The Kid.)

Funny how a city kid can get to know wildlife so well, from mostly reading Nat Geo books and watching “Wild Kratts.”