Redskins Do Weird Things With Dead Animals

Getting to know Jim Zorn has been a fun little learning experience for Redskins fans, such as myself. We knew nothing about the man when he first came to D.C., but over the last few months have come to realize that the guy is a Zen master (one of the first things he did was install his “stay medium” philosophy within the organization), who is as quirky as he is knowledgeable.

So, with that it mind, the story he told to Dan Steinberg today does nothing to surprise me. Although I’m glad he waited until we got to know him a bit before he broke out this doozy -- it’s not the type of story you’d share on your first date:

"We lived on Lake Washington," he began. "Ok, this absolutely was appalling to my bride of 29 years, but I actually found road kill. I didn't hunt the coyote, I found road-kill coyote, put it in a bag, shoved it in my trunk. I thought, 'A coyote pelt, this is awesome!'

"So I took it outside--I didn't bring it in the house obviously--I took it outside, I hung it on a tree right on the waterfront, you know. Beautiful waterfront house, I hung it right on the tree, and I skinned it. Um, and it looked like, I'll tell you what, it looked like a yard dog. So it was a little bit scary, because people were thinking I was skinning my own dog. But it was a coyote.

"So I skinned it out, I put it in a bag and I sent it to a tannery, right? And I got the hide tanned and brought back and I had this really nice coyote pelt, all right?”

But how did Zorn learn how to skin a coyote, you may be asking? He took a human anatomy class in college at Cal Poly Pomona, in which he worked with cadavers. Apparently, the human body has a lot in common with canines.

Being the outstanding bloggy-journalist that Steinberg is, he asked the players for their reactions to the Zorn-skinning story. The best came from center Casey Rabach, a man who also said he drank the blood of the first deer he ever shot because it’s a “rite of passage”:

"That's cool," Rabach said, "but the road kill part? He needs to kill it first, feel the blood, and then skin it. That'd be better. That's like skinning your pet dog. But no, that's cool. At least he got his hands dirty. … He’s got issues.”

Yep, Zorn’s the one with issues. Rabach drinking deer blood? Eh, totally normal behavior.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.