Mermaids, jackalopes and a one-eyed pig

From The Scotsman:
IF YOU walk into most people's living rooms you'd expect to find a sofa, a television, maybe a few magazines and cushions. When you walk into the front room of Gordon Rutter's Edinburgh flat, the sofa's there, but squeezed between his one-eyed pig, his feejee mermaid, his skull collection and of course – the must-have for every cryptozoologist Scot – a miniature Loch Ness Monster.

For Rutter is one of a dying breed of gentlemen-collectors - people who hunt down and collect the unusual, the different, if we're being honest … the downright weird.

"I've been into this sort of thing all my life," says Rutter. "When I was a kid I'd go to the library and devour weird stuff. And now," he says with a wave of his hand, "I've got all this!"

Gordon, is, of course, no stranger to these parts - a member of the Dublin Fortean Society and Blather-co-conspirator. Our man in Edinburgh. And the fiend who introduced me to Absinthe.

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