Now that is one scary post. I'd watch my step (hop?) if I were you, Bullfrog. Re critter skins turned into useful objects, my wife and I took a stroll through my mother's cellar yesterday (something has GOT to be done there) and came upon a handbag made out of an alligator- not just the skin, mind you, but the head and legs, the works. I cracked up, and suggested that my wife adopt it as a sort of practical pet, but she insisted that she'd be arrested. My take on it: So it's better to discard the poor thing, in which case it's life was sacrificed for nought? And a dead alligator goes with anything.