Not long ago, Sam Sanfillippo, a longtime member of the Lions Club, saw an article in the club magazine about albino squirrels in Maryville, Missouri. He wrote to the head of the Maryville club. “I said, ‘If you don’t mind, if one of your albino squirrels gets a heart attack and dies or gets hit by a car, would you mail me one?’ Six months later UPS drives up with a box. We have a beagle. The beagle just started barking and making a lot of commotion. We let him off the leash, and he headed for that box. There were eight albino squirrels inside, packed in dry ice.” The squirrels were destined for the basement of Madison’s Fitch-Lawrence-Sanfillippo-Cress Funeral Home, where mourners who wander down for a cup of coffee might stumble on Sanfillippo’s museum, a sort of Madame Tussaud’s for roadkill.
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Sanfillippo’s been working on his collection for 50 years, glass-enclosed tableaux of squirrels and chipmunks following human pursuits. One scene features a long, polished wooden bar with a stuffed squirrel acting as bartender. On the shelf behind it is a row of little airplane liquor bottles. Squirrel patrons sit along the front of the bar, their drinks before them. One has had a drop too much and is passed out. Another, wearing headphones, sits at a piano, while a squirrel couple dances. Three squirrels sit at a table playing poker, one holding up his hand. “He just got a royal flush,” explains Sanfillippo.
Sanfillippo’s father was a commercial fisherman from Palermo, Sicily. Sam was born in Wisconsin in 1920, one of 12 children, and started fishing when he was four years old. He went into the funeral business in 1941 but was drafted the next year, serving as a paratrooper and nurse in seven major European battles, including the D day landing at Omaha Beach and the Battle of the Bulge. He was wounded five times and earned a Purple Heart, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star. “I should have been dead in 1944,” he says. “It’s a miracle I’m here.”
More albino squirrels have arrived, and each time Sanfillippo sends a donation to the Maryville Lions. So far the albinos have been loosely arranged outside a display case, riding in pink Barbie convertibles that match their eyes. But Sanfillippo intends to use any new albinos for a football-stadium tableau. “I think they’ll probably be at a football game,” he says. “I’ll have some of them in the bleachers. Maybe I’ll have a squirrel in the middle throwing a pass.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Armando Villa.
