Whodonit? (Plush) Shark Attack and Restoration

The Crime Scene

One morning, our son woke to find his beloved shark stuffed animal savagely mauled outside his bedroom door. Poor Sharky.

There were no eye-witnesses, but preliminary forensic evidence pointed to a list of usual suspects thought to be in the vicinity at the time of the incident.

The Suspects:

Ridley: 7 years old, brother of Samus, cuddle bug, verbslizes hunger every morning, has place at family dinner table, Hadley’s disciplinarian, clean record

Hadley: 14 months old, spotty record, expert chewer, high energy, toy thief, occasionally poops household objects

Samus: 7 years old, sister of Ridley, get-off-my-lawn face, murder button permanently engaged, loves coffee, cuddles in order to suck on your neck, will pee on anything

Doug: 8 years old, pro counter-surfer, head of security, afraid of balloons, not known to be a chewer

Pichu: 3 years old, brother of Link, Noah’s BFF, practices odd cat yoga, crooked tail, voice of a kitten, clean record

Link: 3 years old, brother of Pichu, social distancing world champion, high anxiety, rarely seen except in dresser drawers, closets, or under blankets

Evidence:

Exam shows multiple bite marks and soft tissue tearing consistent with a large-toothed, high-energy, stuffed animal predator.

From these findings, the cats were ruled out as suspects. While potentially savage, the cats’ jaws could not replicate bite marks consistent with the injuries of the victim. In the end, they all had alibis that placed them away from the scene of the crime at the time of the incident.

This left us with two suspects – Doug and Hadley. We had a good idea of who was the perpetrator but we needed to be sure. This was a serious offense.

As the victim was being prepped for surgery, investigators noticed significant interest in the victim by one of the suspects. In fact, further attacks were attempted.

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I think it’s safe to say we have found our perpetrator. Unfortunately, she doesn’t understand the difference between the kids’ toys and her own. And, really, how could we blame her for not being able to resist a giant stuffed shark?

Time for repair

We decided our best course of action from this point was to move forward. We offered to buy our son a new shark. That would have been the easier option. He would not hear of this idea, however. He loves this shark and was very upset that we could even think of throwing him away.

On to our next idea – repair. As you can see from the photos, there was quite a lot of damage. We thought about simply sewing him up but with the amount of missing fabric and the amount of use he gets, this would last long. Plus, you really should have seen the gleam in Hadley’s eyes while she was watching us examine him. We knew it was only a matter of time before she got her teeth into him again.

I think it was our son, in the end, who came up with the idea of hanging Sharky on the wall. His thought was to make him look like one of those fish trophies you seen on fishermen’s walls. What a great idea!

Supplies:

• Wooden board we had on hand from the birdcage project
• Sandpaper
• Brown paint – We used acrylic craft paint from this set we had on hand
• Needle and thread
• Staple gun
• Sawtooth picture hanger

Here’s how we did it:

Step 1

First we found our mounting board. I was going to make a picture frame with a wooden background but when we saw this in the garage we knew it would be perfect:

Step 2

The wood was a cut-out from our birdcage project. I offered to cut straight edges but our son liked the uneven, partially-rounded ones. He thought it would look better in the end.

I gave him some sandpaper and he went to work on the rough edges.

Step 3

We considered staining the unfinished edges, or even going with a completely different color, but he chose brown paint to finish them.

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I think it came out really well.

Step 4

We sewed back together what we could. You can see Hadley in the background of the picture on the right. She didn’t stray far from this project. I think she was waiting for her moment to steal Sharky again.

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Step 5

We stapled it to the board.

Et voila!

Step 6

The final step was to add a sawtooth picture hanger. I didn’t get a picture of this step but all you have to do is screw the hanger onto the back of the board and it’s ready to hang.

I think the finished product came out really well. All that matters is that our son was happy with it. We hung Sharky on his bedroom wall where he can see it while he’s in bed.

Repairing Sharky and giving him a new use turned out to be way more fun than simply buying a new plush. We had fun together brainstorming ideas and our son practiced his sewing and learned how to use a staple gun. We had quality time well spent.