interviews
Adele Morse, Taxidermist Who Created The ‘Stoned Fox’ Meme, Shares The Tale Of Her Creation And How She Almost Became A Russian Fugitive
he internet has had a bizarre attraction to weird taxidermied animals almost as long as it’s been around, especially when it comes to memes. From Persian Room Cat Guardian to Depression Dog to Sphere Cow, the number of meme formats centered around taxidermy animals is noteworthy, and Stoned Fox is yet another with quite the captivating backstory.
Back in 2012, London-based artist and taxidermist Adele Morse received a fox that met its end in a bear trap, left to fade away into the forest floor before it was packed in a box and shipped to her door. Giving it a new take on life, Morse decided to use the fox while honing her craft but found its mangled carcass less than ideal and troublesome to work with. Nevertheless, she did come up with something, although even she admitted it was a face only a mother could love, and thus the Stoned Fox was born. Sitting in obscurity before being auctioned off online, Morse’s creation would send her on a whirlwind journey of insane events no one could’ve predicted, from death threats to Russian media attention that almost labeled her as a spy from MI5. To hear this enthralling tale, we caught up with her to dig into the full backstory of the Stoned Fox meme, as well as what she’s currently up to.
Q: Hey, Adele. Thanks for joining us. Let’s start off with a quick intro, so just let everyone know a bit about yourself and what you’re known for on the internet.
A: I am an artist and taxidermist living in London. I always used to keep my taxidermy and art separate but then in 2011, I made a fox that would later become the Stoned Fox meme. When I was making him, everything was going wrong, and just as I was about to give up, I looked at him and he looked EXACTLY how I felt. He looked alive and sick of everything. So I pinned him in place to dry. Everyone I showed him to didn’t know what to say. He sat in my studio for a year before he graced the internet when he got turned into a meme from an eBay auction I held.
Q: So the whole tale of Stoned Fox is pretty insane and quite the journey, but can you give us a little background before jumping in? Tell us about your backstory as an artist and how you first got into taxidermy.
A: I have always been OBSESSED with animals. When I was a kid, I grew up around the mountains in Wales and usually had at least one lizard on me at all times. I had lots of pets too. When I was around 5 to 8, my mother would take me to see the taxidermy at the museum, so I guess I never saw it as weird. I loved being able to touch a lion’s mane or see the pattern on a leopard close up. When I was 15 I went to a nature day and one of the guys there had some taxidermy of local wildlife. I asked him about it and I guess that was the first time I knew it was a profession. Then, 16 years ago, I ordered a book on my AOL dial-up internet and started to learn. I joined a guild, but I was the only girl and I was already doing nontraditional stuff, so I left and decided to go it alone.
As soon as I started, I never really stopped. I think I was seven years in when I did the fox. He was my first. I had only worked on small animals up to that point. Up until 2012, I was mostly studying and doing art: research-based animal theme installation art. Kind of like being inside the Discovery Channel: four-wall projections, sets made to look like a house on the outskirts of a jungle but contain a cheesy Disney-style gift shop. It was really fun to make, but when the fox went viral, I had to follow the white rabbit.
Q: The story of Stoned Fox began in 2012 while you were working on your masters. Kick us off with the beginning, how you got the fox itself and then how you created it.
A: So back then, I didn’t have many contacts for getting animals, as I was in a city. I've been vegetarian since I was 14, so I never use animals that died just for me to do taxidermy, which makes it tricky. I saw someone selling roadkill on eBay. I figured this was the guy to know. So I messaged him and arranged for a box of roadkill. He said he had found a fox and he wasn’t any good for taxidermy but asked if I wanted him. I said yes. I thought, “How bad can he be?” … I was naive. He was very bad. He had got his head crushed in an old bear trap left in the forest. I repaired all the damage and it was clear he wasn’t going to be a traditional fox. He had seen too much. I wanted him to be a little anthropomorphic, but it wasn’t really going right so I sat him on the table and slumped down. When I looked up at him, it was like looking in a mirror. It would still be a year before I took that infamous photo of him in my new studio with my Blackberry 9210.
Q: At the time, what did you make of your taxidermy creation? Did you think it would ever become some worldwide phenomenon or just remain a weird experimental art piece?
A: I mean, I loved him. I didn’t ever in a million years imagine anyone else ever could. In fact, when he went viral, I didn’t believe it. I thought it was a scam. I asked the guy who told me about it for proof. He replied with links to over 100 memes. It was the most surreal experience. I didn’t expect anything that happened and I don’t think anyone could have made it all up.
Q: So then it sat in obscurity for a bit before you decided to sell it online to help fund a trip to Indonesia. Recap a bit of this trip, why you decided to put it up for auction and then the story of Mike Boorman and DJ Space Dimension who ultimately bought it.
A: In 2009 I started getting into cryptozoology. I wanted to include it in my work somehow. I had a plan to try to make a sculpture of one of these undiscovered animals and then go on an expedition and find the animal itself using photos of my sculpture to track it down. By 2012, all of that had come true and I was invited by a science channel to go on an expedition for a documentary. I said yes, but I am more video games and making stuff in my house kind of girl than hiking and trekking, so I needed a ton of supplies and shots. I decided to auction some stuff so I put the fox on eBay. I was getting a lot of strange questions on my eBay listing, but I didn’t think anything of it.
I found out later a DJ here in the UK (Space Dimension Controller) had posted the eBay link offering to DJ for free for anyone who got him that fox. Enter Mike Boorman. He saw the opportunity for an adventure and won the auction for £333. Mike put on a gig with the fox on the poster and sold tickets. I went with my friends who had no clue what was going on. The Lion King music was playing in this club and the DJ was holding the fox up like Simba whilst everyone chanted, “Fox, Fox, FOX!” I ended up buying the fox back off him two years ago … for a much higher price. :/
Q: After that event, the fox went viral in Russia and later spread to the rest of the world online, eventually becoming the “Stoned Fox” meme. When did you first see a meme using your taxidermied fox, and when did you notice the meme itself was really taking off? How’d you react to seeing it become an online phenomenon?
A: The first memes I saw were sent to me in my eBay messages from a journalist in Russia. I had no idea what I was looking at. There were sooo many of them. Every time I would explain it to someone, I knew they would talk to me slowly like I had lost my mind, and it did feel like that. I loved it so much but I for sure had no idea at that point of the true amount of memes that existed or how many people had seen my fox. Nobody had any idea who made him, so the rumor was that a drug dealer had made him on acid. The journalist said everyone had been trying to find me and asked me to do an interview for his LiveJournal. I didn’t know how many people read blogs in Russia at the time, but when the article was published, it unleashed a tsunami. I was getting media requests from all the newspapers and TV channels in Russia.
Q: Were you knowledgeable about memes and internet culture at all back then, or was this a totally new experience for you?
A: So I had seen memes before, but I didn’t know the word for them really. I was always obsessed with the internet from when my mother showed me Rotten.com when I was 12. I was mostly into forums and blogs or sites like Reddit and B3TA, but I wasn’t really on social media after Myspace, so I was missing a whole bunch. I didn’t try to get on social media until 2014 and by then, there were sooo many fake profiles. SO many memes. It was pretty amazing to catch up on and I think the delay saved me a bit. As you can imagine, it was a lot of negative stuff, which I find funny, but might have been a bit much for me at the time when everything was so full-on. My highlight still has to be Snoop Dog posting him. The dream.
Q: After Stoned Fox became a well-known meme, did you tell any friends or family about your involvement in creating it?
A: Yeah, I was telling everyone I knew but they had no idea what I was talking about. My brothers were 11 and 12 when it went viral, so they understood it and thought it was really cool. Even now, a lot of the time when I meet someone I haven’t seen for a while or don’t know too well and they will ask what I do, I say “taxidermy,” then they ask, “Oh have you seen that fox on the chair?” and I have to explain I made him. It is so cool but also feels really weird to say it. It’s kind of like I had a hit song in the ‘90s that everyone knows but nobody knows who sang it. On the other hand, If you google “Adele Taxidermy” I come up first so it was impossible to go on a date from one of the apps without them having seen all the crazy stuff that happened in Russia.
Q: So there are some other crazy events that happened to you around the time the meme went viral, such as death threats, media coverage, and a whole whirlwind of wild stuff that eventually saw Stoner Fox become a symbol of Russian political dissent. Can you recap some of this and what happened to you in 2013?
A: So I blame my grandmother for all this. I was getting lots of press requests from Russia but then I got one from a local paper based in the little village I grew up in. I thought my Nan would be happy to see me in it so I agreed to a phone interview. When the story was printed the journalist had misquoted me totally as having said “Russians are all sad and drunk.” This was two weeks before I was due to do a 12-day press tour of St. Petersburg. The communist party KPLO saw this and the political memes and thought I had made them and was trying to poison the youth. The week before my trip, I was getting death threats every day between doing interviews. I didn’t realize until later that everything I was saying was being printed word for word on the front page of the largest newspaper in Russia.
Vitaly Milanov (who looks exactly like Peter Griffin and is the guy behind the anti-gay propaganda legislation) was in office at the time and he was organizing protests and trying to get me arrested and disease tested. Then a week before I was due to fly out, a newspaper printed Alex Navalny’s press secretary wearing a T-shirt with my fox on and said it was me. The left said it was a deliberate attempt to slander Putin’s opposition and came out in support of me. This made everything even crazier. Then It was time to go to Russia.
Center: We are against taxidermists, Right: We are against the Stoned Fox.)
I met Mike off eBay at the airport who had the fox in a bin bag and we flew to St. Petersburg. We walked out of the airport into a ton of TV crews with cameras all asking me questions in Russian. I was rushed away in a taxi by the organizer of the exhibition and tour. At that moment I was like, “What am I doing?!” but it was just the start. The first press day we had planned for 60 journalists but 350 showed up. I had them all taking photos at the same time in a small room literally punching each other for a better shot. Then I met my guard who showed me his gun. He didn’t seem to like me. I started doing interviews for the next six hours, when I stopped and looked at my phone, the protests and press frenzy had hit the press in the UK and all kinds of crazy stuff was being written. The communist party published a blog about me saying I was a drug dealer, a prostitute, a pedophile and … a SPY for MI5! My brother texted me to ask if it was true, so I knew I probably wasn’t ever getting a job again.
For 10 days we went to all these strange places as a guest of honor. A wedding fete where the real housewives of Russia were asking for my autograph. I did a meme competition at a giant supermarket where a thousand people showed up. I did a cool autograph signing at a little comic book shop. I went to the Vkontakte Offices for a tour the night before they were raided. I set up an account with them that got 20,000 followers in a day. I was getting marriage proposals from 12-year-olds. There were protests every day, six or seven different groups of people. It was SO surreal. The fox even did a skydive.
I went back to Moscow later, but that trip was an ordeal and surreal in different ways. I was interviewed by Business Insider in a sex museum underneath a Dunkin Donuts and that’s all I will say.
Q: Looking back on your humble creation, did you ever expect it to become the viral sensation that it did? Why do you think people latched onto it and found it so humorous?
A: Not only did I not expect him to go viral then, but he still does a few times a year, and I am always amazed! When The Sonic trailer came out, the memes using my fox were amazing. Same for the Cats movie trailer, the Profile Pic vs. Reality memes, even when a new banknote was released in Brazil, he was on Yahoo Finance. Soooo many people have tattoos of him too. I think he just really is relatable. I felt it that first moment he came alive again on my table. I knew that feeling behind that expression and I think other people do too.
Q: Of all the Stoned Fox memes from over the years, what are some of your favorites? Have you made any yourself?
A: For sure, my fox as Sonic — I also love some of the OG ones of him with Putin or riding Nyan Cat smoking a pipe. I really love the GIFs of him spliced into Total Recall or eating popcorn. I started making my own memes of him about five years ago. It’s been really fun to give my own take and be able to use my other angles of him now I have him back home with me, even if he has withered with age.
Q: With meme NFTs drumming up a lot of attention lately, we heard you were planning to auction off a unique Stoned Fox crypto-collectible this week. How did you learn about NFTs and what led to you deciding to mint Stoned Fox?
A: I got interested in crypto after making some friends in Russia who were mining back in 2012. I never really had the funds to get into it, but last year, I felt like it was a good time to get myself some coins. This led to me hearing about NFTs. I am a collector through and through, so I totally got the appeal of owning a rare token that was permanently on the blockchain. I know if I was collecting meme NFTs, I would want my fox and the goat I made that went viral as the “Carti Goat.” So after a ton of research, I got an invite to Foundation and minted my fox. I have no idea what to expect, really, but I think this is a really good way for artists to reclaim ownership of images that are all over the internet. I really believe this tech will be everywhere soon. All the NFTs I make will be one-of-one. Kicking off with my Mona Lisa, my firstborn meme, Stoned Fox. He will be up for auction on April 1st at 1 p.m. PT (9 p.m. GMT).
Q: When does the auction end? Any guess as to what it’ll sell for?
A: The listing goes live on my Foundation page at 1 p.m. PT April 1st. I feel like it’s the perfect day for his third resurrection in a new form and second auction. I honestly have no idea what he will sell for. I am kind of an outsider who made the weird fox, and I missed out on a ton of the branding and money-making opportunities, so I have no idea how my guy stacks up against the legends like Trollface, Nyan Cat or Grumpy Cat who have all sold recently. Whatever happens, I am really excited to find out.
Q: Are there any other strange taxidermy creations you’ve made over the years that you feel could also have been memes? Which ones didn’t get their time in the spotlight that maybe should have?
A: That is the weirdest thing. A lot of my work has gone viral, which had nothing to do with me. I am never credited, but I made a lot of the weird creatures that are memes. None as widespread as my OG fox, but some are getting close. A video I made of my goat went viral in a few strange ways. First, he went viral on Reddit, then floated around all the spooky video accounts. Then he got made into one of these cursed WhatsApp videos that were circulated in North African countries. I live alone and it was lockdown here and suddenly my phone was blowing up. Apparently, the rumor was that he was literally Satan and that I had somehow summoned him in some Illuminati ritual. I had sooo many messages asking if I really was Satan and had to make a public announcement and people still didn’t really believe me. He is going off on TikTok at the moment apparently.
Q: So what else are you doing these days? Would you mind sharing some of your recent work or any interesting projects with us?
A: I lost a ton of work during the pandemic, so I started obsessively making tiny frogs to restore my serotonin. That turned into the creation of the frog club, which made it possible to keep doing what I love full time: making stuff. They also grouped together and made a GoFundMe when my cat got diagnosed with cancer at the start of this year. As things are opening up a bit, new stuff is coming in. I am making a fox head mask for a horror film at the moment. I am going to make a fox odd body Furby mash-up. Then my first taxidermy opossum, I feel like they are so relatable anyway so I am excited to see how mine ends up. There are some talks of a possible fox documentary using the footage I have from Russia, but nothing is set in stone. I have a few ideas for animations and NFTs that I want to bring to life and release over the year, so lots to keep me busy.
Q: Okay, last question here that’s a bit of a random one. Putting yourself in the mind of the fox that went on to become a famous meme format post-mortem, what do you think they would make of their afterlife and ascension into meme legend?
A: I think about this a lot. He was pretty young when he got caught in that trap and should have vanished into the earth but instead, he became immortal. He has been to countries I have never been to and done things most people would die to do. I hope 100 years from now he is being shared in some meme about how rubbish adjusting to life on Mars is.
Q: Any final statements to add before we go?
A: It’s always been my dream to get an interview here, so thank you for having me. :)
Adele Morse is a London-based artist and taxidermist whose creation became the Stoned Fox meme, which was popularized in 2013. To see more of Morse and her work, you can follow her on Instagram and Twitter or check out her website and Foundation profile for the NFT.
Comments ( 5 )
Sorry, but you must activate your account to post a comment.