Stuffed fish and Boiled owl

Question

Hello!Could you help me, please?In "Poirot"they say "What a stuffed fish! No, not a stuffed fish. A boiled owl." about a man who cares too much about his reputation. What do these phrases mean? I can't find anything in dictionaries.Thank you!

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Maria DIn "Poirot"they say "What a stuffed fish! No, not a stuffed fish. A boiled owl." about a man who cares too much about his reputation. What do these phrases mean? I can't find anything in dictionaries.

It's not that he cares about his reputation, I think. He had just been talking about the British tradition of keeping a stiff upper lip, that is, being even-tempered. Japp's comment was a reference to taxidermy. When a person catches an exceptional fish, he can have it stuffed and mounted to hang on his wall. In a similar vein, taxidermists boil mammals to clean the bones off so they can use them to recreate the creature, in this case an owl, by covering them with padding and the skin they removed earlier. Sounds pretty gruesome when you talk about it like this, but it's not so bad when they're done. The man who just left was so phlegmatic that he might as well have been the creation of a taxidermist.

I do not think that either "stuffed fish" or "boiled owl" is a fixed expression in general use.

Stuffed fish and Boiled owl

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