Daniel is right- doing battle with the parser is almost always a bad idea, usually ( as he outlines) leading to having to deal with a mounting cascade of ‘yes, but what if the player types …’ scenarios you hadn’t first thought of. When I said it was an inelegant solution I should perhaps have been stronger and called it ‘crude and ill-advised’.
Even Daniel’s suggested solution of hacking the meaning of ‘pelts’ (which opens a smaller skirmish against the parser) leads to unwanted side-effects when the player asks to do things with ‘pelts’ other than examine them- ‘take pelts’ for example- which the player will expect, according to usual parser behaviour, to lead to an attempt to take each individual pelt object in turn leading to an inventory full of pelts- now leads to an unexpected attempt to take (i) in your original scenario the pelts scenery-object (which fails with the jarring response ‘That’s hardly portable.’) or (ii) in your latest scenario, the following:
Cottage interior
Many pelts hang from the wall.
>take pelts
Taken.
>i
You are carrying:
a pelts rack
a beaver pelt
weasel pelt
mink pelt
coyote pelt
raccoon pelt
wolf pelt
an unknown pelt
When you find yourself tempted to open battle with the parser, it is almost always worthwhile reanalysing the issue and looking for a different approach.
The fundamental problem you’re battling with here is that you’re trying to give two things the same name and then to make assumptions as to which of the two the player means when she refers to that name. The complicating factor is that the clash is in the plural of one object clashing with the singular name of the other, which prevents the parser’s usual disambiguation mechanism (‘Which do you mean, …’) from kicking in.
A simple tweak to the name of the rack and a nudge to the parser to discourage it from jumping to conclusions (that ‘pelt’ refers to the pelt rack rather than some individual pelt) probably solves most of your problems:
Cottage interior is a room.
A pelt is a kind of thing.
A pelt rack is a container in cottage interior. "Many pelts hang from a rack on the wall."
The beaver pelt, the weasel pelt, the mink pelt, the coyote pelt, the raccoon pelt, the wolf pelt, and an unknown pelt are pelts in the pelt rack.
Does the player mean doing something with the pelt rack: it is unlikely.
Cottage interior
Many pelts hang from a rack on the wall.
> x pelts
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.
>x rack
In the pelt rack are a beaver pelt, a weasel pelt, a mink pelt, a coyote pelt, a raccoon pelt, a wolf pelt and an unknown pelt.
>x pelt
Which do you mean, the pelt rack, the beaver pelt, the weasel pelt, the mink pelt, the coyote pelt, the raccoon pelt, the wolf pelt or the unknown pelt?
>take pelt
Which do you mean, the pelt rack, the beaver pelt, the weasel pelt, the mink pelt, the coyote pelt, the raccoon pelt, the wolf pelt or the unknown pelt?
>take pelts
beaver pelt: Taken.
weasel pelt: Taken.
mink pelt: Taken.
coyote pelt: Taken.
raccoon pelt: Taken.
wolf pelt: Taken.
unknown pelt: Taken.
You could of course make things even easier for the parser by just calling the pelts rack ‘a rack’ and giving it a printed name of ‘pelts rack’ or ‘pelt rack’ if you wanted.
Cottage interior is a room.
A pelt is a kind of thing.
A rack is a container in cottage interior. "Many pelts hang from a rack on the wall." The printed name of the rack is "pelts rack".
The beaver pelt, the weasel pelt, the mink pelt, the coyote pelt, the raccoon pelt, the wolf pelt, and an unknown pelt are pelts in the rack.
Cottage interior
Many pelts hang from a rack on the wall.
>x pelts
You can't use multiple objects with that verb.
>x rack
In the pelts rack are a beaver pelt, a weasel pelt, a mink pelt, a coyote pelt, a raccoon pelt, a wolf pelt and an unknown pelt.
>x pelt
Which do you mean, the beaver pelt, the weasel pelt, the mink pelt, the coyote pelt, the raccoon pelt, the wolf pelt or the unknown pelt?
>take pelt
Which do you mean, the beaver pelt, the weasel pelt, the mink pelt, the coyote pelt, the raccoon pelt, the wolf pelt or the unknown pelt?
>take pelts
beaver pelt: Taken.
weasel pelt: Taken.
mink pelt: Taken.
coyote pelt: Taken.
raccoon pelt: Taken.
wolf pelt: Taken.
unknown pelt: Taken.
PS You’ll still need to fix the description of the rack when some or all of the pelts are taken. You probably also want to make it fixed in place.