Still Life by Melissa Milgrom (best ebook reader TXT) 📕

friends were chatty and laid-back. Two of the women had been best friends since they were eight; they'd vowed to marry brothers one day, and they had. The brothers sat next to their wives, drinking beer. Karaoke started at 10:30. We sat down and ordered a pitcher. Ken looked preoccupied, as if it were a distraction to be here tonight when the World Show was only weeks away. But it was evident that he was going to sing.

He flipped through a binder of titles; there were thousands of songs. I wondered which one he'd choose. Then the MC, a skinny rocker with a beard and long black hair, walked onto the linoleum dance floor, turned on the teleprompter, grabbed the mike, and led off with "Lay Your Hands on Me" by Bon Jovi. He flailed his head this way and that, his long black hair slashing the air like a cat-o'-nine-tails. When he finished, an attractive blond woman sang "Like a Little Prayer" by Madonna in a voice so angelic and calm it was comforting.

At the Stony Plain Hotel, people could momentarily escape the isolation of winter in Alberta, with its off-season poverty and alcoholism. Here it was possible to imagine yourself a star in Montreal or Vancouver. That is, unless you struck up a conversation with one of Colette's friends, Pete. He wasn't moved by "Bon Jovi" or "Madonna." He preferred to talk about Alberta.

"Is Alberta beef on the menus in New York?" he asked me. I had not heard of it. "While you're in Alberta, have a prime rib or a T-bone," he advised. "It's ultimate. It's fine, not a coarse meat. Have a charbroiled beefsteak. And you've got to ride a mechanical bull. The women love it! Go to the Cook County Saloon. There's also one at Cowboys." Pete talked and talked. He talked through Shirley's rendition of "You Sexy Thing." He talked while Shirley's boyfriend belted out "Brick House." "D'ya eat buffalo yet?" he asked. I shook my head. Then: "Men are really men here. They aren't sly dogs like in Toronto and the States. Hardworking. Driven. Rednecks, but tolerant. Strong, too."

Finally, it was Ken's turn. He got up on the dance floor and grabbed the mike. He stood far from the teleprompter and began to sing. It was an old rock classic by Stealers Wheel, "Stuck in the Middle." I hadn't heard the song in years; listening to it now made me feel nostalgic. "Well you started with nothing and you're a self-made man," he sang, holding his hand out by his side for ballast. His voice was rich and even-toned and had the unmistakable high tenor of Roy Orbison. It was thrilling to hear it. When Ken was finished, everyone applauded. He nodded and sat back down as "Axl Rose" took the mike and sang, "I used to love her, but I had to kill her."

"After I won my first Best of Show, no one ever treated me the same," he said, reaching for the binder. He flicked through the pages. The song lyrics were in plastic sleeves so they wouldn't get beer stained. I yearned for Roy Orbison, one of his lonesome ballads: "Crying" or "Blue Bayou." Orbison seemed like the perfect singer for Ken to imitate because of the daunting challenge: few can knock off Orbison's three-octave range. The MC said, "Ken's going to kick us up with some good old classics. I haven't had this tune in years. 'Come a Little Bit Closer' by Jay and the Americans."

It would drive a person crazy to name every animal species that has vanished from the earth. The number is incomprehensible and rises daily. The 2006 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity reported that species are going extinct at a rate one thousand times faster than in the past. The Audubon Society's WatchList of threatened birds now includes 214 species, a 10 percent increase from 2002. The New York Times reports that 40 percent of all mammal species in China are endangered: pollution, hunting, and uncontrolled development are decimating them. The world's last two Yangtze giant soft-shell turtles—the largest known freshwater turtles—are unlikely to mate: these two symbols of health and longevity, ages eighty and one hundred, live in separate zoos. Cuvier the catastrophist was prophetic, yet who could have predicted the global meltdown that is defrosting the polar ice caps, scorching Arizona, and flooding New Orleans?

When I thought about Ken's endeavor to breathe life into an Irish elk, it seemed profound and important. This didn't make me happy; it filled me with dread. Taxidermy has come full circle. As more and more species become extinct due to global warming and other human factors, dioramas, sadly, have regained their original purpose: to freeze nature in its most glorious moments for a public that yearns for it yet is watching it disappear. Perhaps in the future, taxidermy will be mostly recreations—re-creations of animals that have perished because of man.

As Ken drove me to the airport, I felt sad for all the taxidermists, from William Hornaday on down, who had something to offer science but who had to compete in shows for recognition. Ken called it credibility. You could also call it dignity.

9. I STUFF A SQUIRREL

FOR A LONG TIME, I had been thinking about attempting a mount. Next to competing, Ken Walker said the best way to learn is to actually preserve something, so one day I decided to roll up my sleeves and get my hands bloody.

Although I love birds, I wanted to mount a mammal—something suitably small and relatively easy, something ubiquitous and easy to observe even in New York City, where wildlife seems incongruous and irrelevant. The animal would have to be legally procured. It would have to have a tough, pliable skin, nothing delicate like a rabbit or with translucent parts like an opossum; nothing with a thick layer of subcutaneous fat like a walrus or with stink glands like a skunk; nothing politically incorrect like a baby