Britain's wackiest taxidermist has revealed his latest creation - a two-in-one pencil case sharpener made from a dead rat. Jack Devaney, 26, buys rodents from pet shop freezers and has been turning them into unusual artworks and objects. His latest bizarre item sold via his company 'World Around Ewe' is a pencil case with a combined sharpener - which can be found at the animal's rear end. Jack - who also makes 'animalgamations' where he combines different animals to make unusual creations - said he has already sold out of his latest £75 rat pencil cases. The artist from Plymouth, Devon, said: "It’s mad how much you can make out of a rat; there’s a lot of mileage to them. "You’ve got heads that you can turn into fridge magnets, legs that you can use to make pawtable high five machines, tails that you can turn into wrigglers, and ball sacks you can put in pendants." Jack has been selling self-called 'bad taxidermy' for five years and uses skills he learned as a butcher when he was a teenager. His first attempted involved stuffing a mouse to impress his girlfriend - who he is still with. “I mostly applied what I knew from dressing and plucking game birds at the butcher shop," he said. Jack showcases his work on TikTok, and viral videos have driven up sales of his work and his book 50 Ways To Torture A Sloth, and increased listeners of his WorldAroundEwe’s podcast. But he said his new found fame has also led to more unusual requests. Jack said: "Someone asked for ‘a fox interfering with a badger’. "I told them that I couldn’t work with badgers and they changed their request to ‘a fox interfering with a hedgehog’. "I think the theme of it was more important to that guy than the finished product so I politely declined.” The unique creator said rats are his most used animal. His favourite piece is from his collection Rat People and involves a chef made from the front half of a rat attached the lower half of an action figure. It is standing in front of a BBQ made from six mice. "It can open and close and I suppose you could probably use it for a very small barbecue, though I imagine only the one and it’ll have to be something that cooked quickly as it’d probably catch fire," he said. "It's just a decoration either way." He gets most his rodents from pet shop freezers where they're usually used for snake food. But he sometimes buys other taxidermists' work and re-purposes them in to his own wacky creations. Asked why he does it, he said: "I’ve never been into art - I just make stuff in the hopes that at some point someone will make some form of time travel machine and I can go back in time to post them on the internet so that I can make myself laugh as a kid. "I like making stuff that makes me laugh or smirk when I look at it."
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Fun