Clara Mulch's Questionnaire

I was born out in Malheur county, but the ol' ball and chain is from Portland and that's where we met, so I was living out there for a few years doing work with the claw. Once I was through with all them though, we wanted to settle down somewhere a little prettier, so a year ago I set up shop in Eugene and the rest is history. We live right upstairs the shop, nice little place, I try to keep it tidy, but sometimes it does turn into a bit of a storage room if I got too many friends to fit downstairs. The neighbours are all lovely, I've made a good few hiking buddies just talking to the customers, which is real nice for when Art's out on her little trips. I'm not dumb enough to walk those trails alone.

The shops been doing good, it's not exactly bustling, but that's the nature of the business, lot of folks wandering into the shop and right back out, but once you find a handful of good customers that's where the real money comes from. Not just the wannabes who buy one elk mount for their living room and never come back, but the people who really get what it is I'm doing and understand exactly how sacred a dignified death can be. Often they're hunters who I help honour their prey, sometimes they're just collectors. Either way, thanks to them, I have a pretty steady stream of income. I don't use it for all that much, paying off the shop, buying some new gear, getting something nice for Artis, that's about it.

I used to really truly believe that if we fought hard enough we could win, and I did, I fought like hell for years. Christ, my wife's still fighting like hell! I'm not so optimistic anymore though. We had our chance, and it was maybe twenty or so years ago, but I think we've crossed that line and things aren't looking so good for the earth or for any of us. At the very least things are gonna get a whole lot worse for the world before they get any better, and that's not going to look like a revolution, it's going to look like a reset. If we can't win, then I just want to make humanity know just exactly what we've lost, what we're bleeding dry. I don't think I'd care much if I died to do that. I'd miss my wife, I'd miss the shop, but it'd feel a little selfish putting all that before something so much bigger than me. The earth is dead and buried, it would add such profound insult to such deep cruelty to not allow her a memorial.

Well, I suppose things would've gone quite a lot different if I'd never joined the claw. Before Art asked me to attend my first meeting, I was clueless and dumb as bricks. Technically, I was already an OWL member, but that was just because I liked the forest and the critters in it. Never thought too hard about it all, but that first meeting was all I needed. For the first time I really understood the devastation our planet was suffering. Didn't take more than a couple hours to radicalize me, the following years were a blur of tree spiking and oil exec hunting, I had never rallied for something so deeply in my life. You know how it goes though, we kept working harder and things just kept getting worse. Even though I'm not with them anymore, I'm certainly a better person for my time there, wouldn't be half as kind or half as competent if I'd never worked with them. Wish them all the best. It takes balls to go down kicking.

Johan: Taxidermied muskrat that Clara takes EVERYWHERE. She accidentally rode him over a year ago and wasn't able to nurse him back to health, so she decided to taxidermy him and keep him company. She does this half out of like a weird pathological guilt and half because he genuinely brings her a lot of comfort.

Buck: Clara's pet German Sheppard. He is so old. Concerningly old.

Artis Boyd: Clara's wife, werebear, and active ecoterrorist. Looks very portlandian in her human form, terf bangs, thick rimmed glasses, usually wearing overalls. Spiritual, artsy type (she has six etsy businesses). Supportive of Clara's taxidermy and wider ambitions, but is generally more flora focused than her wife and doesn't help with the more messy stuff. Turns into a 11ft 2000lb short-faced bear every full moon. She's honed her lycanthropy enough to activate it on will and not harm Clara during full moons, but she's still a danger to most other people, so they usually go on a camping trip every month before the full moon so she can go bear mode alone in the mountains. She is also still an active member of the sanguine claw.

Jeff and Tina Mulch: Clara's parents, they live in a very small town in rural Oregon and run a corner store. They're both nice people, but they don't really keep in touch as much as Clara would want to. She still visits for holidays and calls once in a while, they're happy and seem proud of her, but also a little confused and in the dark about a lot of her life

My father ran the only gas station in a 100-mile radius of the scenic unincorporated community of Harper, Oregon. Well, I don't know if everyone would call it scenic, but I would. Never cared for beaches or forests like I do for mountains, and Harper's surrounded by them. Wasn't all that much to do besides just look at the mountains. School was alright, but in a town of 4 dozen or so families it's hard to find all that many teachers, or all that many students for that matter. I guess I had friends back then, but I never found myself half as connected to them as I was to the possums or the birds or whatever else rustled through the grass up by the cliffs. I went out hunting with my dad a lot. He was just as kind to the elk as he was to me, and I think he really understood the gravity of what he was doing and the sanctity of the bodies he took home for us. His friends didn't. He took me along one time on a hunt with them, and that was enough for me to never touch a gun again until my twenties. Still makes me nauseous, what they did. Realized just about all the men in Harper had that same sickness, and that was enough for me to get on out once I could.

I met Artis in the same week that I first realized that magic was real, monsters were real, and that anthropogenic climate change would destroy the world in a matter of generations. And she was still the only thing I could focus on. I have never exactly been very good at playing it coy, but it must have been particularly bad because she later claimed that she first asked me out so I would, quote, "stop publicly humiliating myself". How can you blame me though? She was the most interesting girl in the world!! Still is! At least now I'm a little more used to it, but back then it really was a struggle not spending every minute we were away talking about her to my friends. The worse struggle was the two years I had to spend holding myself back from proposing. Six years ago, we tied the knot, and I'm still just as mesmerized as the day I met her.