So while my friend, my Handsome Assistant, and I were digging up kudzu roots, I encountered a small guy. He was very dirty and neglected — it looked like he’d been left in the mud for the entire winter. There were seeds sprouting in his fur. Burrs. Earthworms. He had a missing ear and most of the flocking rubbed off his nose.

He was, in short, the most tragic stuffed bear that I’d ever seen.

I’ll be perfectly candid with you: I have a terrible weakness for sad things happening to stuffed animals. Those commercials with the teddy bear left in the rain? Forget about it.

When I was very little — four or five or so — I got it into my head that tornadoes were a Major Problem that I needed to be ready for. I didn’t live in an area that really experienced them, but that didn’t matter. If one came along I was going to be prepared.

I was also deeply worried about what’d happen to my stuffed animals. My parents told me that, if we ever did have to evacuate, I’d have to leave them behind. They could be replaced, and there wouldn’t be time to take them with us.

However, what I heard was that I had to be extremely efficient.

From then on, for years, every time I heard about a tornado touching down absolutely anywhere in the US, I’d take all of my stuffed animals, carefully pack them into trash bags, and line the bags up next to my bedroom door. That way, I reasoned, I could grab them without having to stop. It wouldn’t waste time, and I could still make sure that everyone got out okay. That nobody would be left behind.

(And yet, somehow, my parents were shocked when I was diagnosed with anxiety as a teenager. Shocked.)

So I stood there, holding this dripping, squashed, crusty, almost unrecognizable teddy bear in a gloved hand.

It was very gross, and I’d have to bring him (and whatever he carried with/inside of him) into my house. Still, the thought of leaving him behind tugged at my heartstrings. Also, from a more practical standpoint, leaving him there meant that he’d eventually introduce a lot of microplastics into the environment. Birds might pick at him and take his stuffing to line their nests, where the polyester strands could tangle their chicks’ claws and injure them. I couldn’t leave him behind, could I? If not for him, then for the sake of all those hypothetical baby birds.

“I can rebuild him. I have the technology,” I declared, as I stuffed him in a tote bag.

Restoring a Bear

Fortunately, I wasn’t wrong.

The first step was letting him dry out, so I could brush off as much of the crusted-over mud as possible and pick off the more egregious bits of flora and fauna that had hitched a ride.

Then, I had to unstitch around one of his paw pads so I could access his stuffing. I didn’t trust it, and I wasn’t sure what might’ve laid eggs/burrowed into it, so I needed to pull it all out. If I could clean it and reuse it, great. If not, I was going to have to safely discard it somehow.

Once he was entirely unstuffed, I could give him a thorough wash, dry, and brushing to make his fur fluffy again. It took several rounds of rinsing and a fair bit of scrubbing.

After drying, he was able to be restuffed. I had a bunch of very soft rags that I’d cut from a clean shirt. (Everlane, whose organic cotton poet shirt tore like tissue paper. Feh.) I shredded them up as finely as I could, then used my fingers, a pair of tweezers, and a chopstick to make sure that the ersatz stuffing made it to every corner of the bear.

Once he was plump and evenly stuffed again, I re-stitched his paw pad back in place with some black cotton thread. Et voilà! He was more-or-less back to what I assume was his old self again.

Except for one thing…

A Missing Ear

His right ear. It had been missing entirely from the beginning. I didn’t see it on the ground when I picked him up. From the smoothness of that side of his head, it looked like it had torn cleanly off.

The trouble is, I didn’t have any material that could make a convincing replacement. I didn’t even have any funky material that could work in a “medical prosthetics but make it fashion” way. I didn’t want to leave him with nothing, though.

I rustled up a pattern for a small, crocheted flower and a leaf. Some Malabrigo superwash merino yarn and a Czech glass bead later, and I had a rather fetching flower fascinator that’d do.

I dabbed on a coat of black paint over the rubbed-off part of his nose, and he’s good to go. He’s clean, bug-free, and even has his missing ear (somewhat) fixed. While my poet shirt didn’t do very well as an actual shirt, it did make for some excellent stuffing — firm and voluminous, but soft enough not to be lumpy.

I wish I could say that this is the first time I’ve found a small guy left in the woods and randomly decided to bring it home for restoration, but of course it isn’t. I’m at the point where this has happened often enough that I now deliberately watch for dropped toys and other objects left behind.

What can I say? I’m an absolute sucker for a sad little dummy.