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

One of the most common mammals in the eastern United States is the eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), a rodent with a year-and-a-half life span. I wanted to mount one. I wanted to make my own form from scratch using the soft-bodied technique—the method whereby you make an artificial body out of bent wires wound with excelsior (slender wood shavings) and padded with tow (chopped hemp fiber) and cotton. I figured if I could stomach skinning and fleshing, I could mount something. I was less convinced that I could give it the vital spark taxidermists always talk about: the magic part, requiring discipline and obsession and reverential love. Taxidermy's objective is clear yet impossible: to create a counterpart to life itself.

"Bad taxidermy is easy, I grant, but we are not discussing stuffed monstrosities of any kind," William Hornaday wrote in 1883. You have to know everything about an animal to capture its essence in a mount, yet you needn't know a thing about it to detect even a tiny flaw—and everyone knows what squirrels are supposed to look like. I had seen mounts at the World Taxidermy Championships with exposed seams, lopsided ears, or unnaturally angular shoulders; whose eyes were too closely set; whose bodies were truncated or hollowed out into planters or whatever. Whenever I encountered these horrors, I felt deeply disturbed. No wonder people find taxidermy creepy.

You'd think the proliferation of taxidermy schools in America would raise the standards—and they do to a certain extent. However, no formal training has ever been required to become a taxidermist, which adds to its idiosyncratic appeal. All the famous American taxidermists entered the trade circuitously or by apprenticeship. Apprenticeship seemed the most authentic way to go, and for an unskilled, unartistic New Jersey native who fears unleashed dogs, it was truly the only option. However, before I asked the Schwendemans if they would teach me, I considered my alternatives.

I could have enrolled in a taxidermy school. The Academy of Realistic Taxidermy in Havre, Montana, seemed a good choice at the time, but its beginner course required a tetanus shot and eight weeks in a dormitory with a roommate. I could have gone it alone. Darin Flynn's Mounting a Fox Squirrel video, which I had bought at the WTC, was tame enough, but he used a premade foam manikin; I wanted to make mine from scratch, using the method Walker had on the bush baby at the Smithsonian. It was because of him, in fact, that I had bought The Breakthrough Mammal Taxidermy Manual, another false start. It contains a how-to section on small mammals, with photos of flayed squirrels turned inside out like leather gloves. When I saw their sunken eyes and exposed organs, I slammed the book shut and never opened it again.

The Wildlife Artist Supply Company in Monroe, Georgia, sells a prefabricated squirrel-mounting kit specifically for the aspiring taxidermist and a choice of 125 squirrel manikins, each striking a riveting pose: climbing a tree, hanging dead, sitting upright with a nut, barking. The kit costs a reasonable $24.95—a compelling alternative to formal education—but where would I do it? In my parents' garage? In my publisher's conference room?

An apprenticeship seemed the best way to go. I needed mentors, I decided, and when the Schwendemans agreed to teach me, I was overjoyed (and a bit nervous).

Bruce can mount a squirrel in two 14-hour days if he does nothing else, but David insists that when a taxidermist rushes, it will show in his work. "People can erect a shopping center in less time than it takes to mount a deer head," says Bruce. He compares the intricate craft to bookbinding or restoring an old flag; no two mounts are alike. We agreed to pace ourselves and work in discrete phases, and in the end, the squirrel took six months to preserve. "Geez, you had to choose a squirrel," Bruce groaned when I first mentioned the idea. "Why couldn't you choose something easier like a bear? How'd you talk me into this?"

We never discussed when we would start or who would "dispatch" the squirrel—or how. I wasn't in a hurry. I wasn't sure I had the stomach for taxidermy. The tools alone—eyehooks, brain spoons, and toe probes—made me shudder. I could barely watch Julia Child filet a fish on TV. And I certainly wasn't going to shoot anything. For one thing, up until fairly recently, the only trigger I'd ever pulled was at a boardwalk arcade. For another, I have awful eyesight.

Before we began, David urged me to study my specimen, and like all good taxidermists, I started to identify with the species, imbuing squirrels with human characteristics (neurotic little New Yorkers, always impeccably groomed). On my way to work, I observed their nervous, jerky behavior in a lush community garden on Twenty-fifth Street. On my way home, I watched them scamper, then freeze (always clutching a nut, their beady little eyes transfixed) in front of the Clearview Cinema on West Twenty-third Street. At home, I kept my binoculars near the window to watch them race across wires or leap like monkeys from branch to branch. My visits to the American Museum of Natural History become more pointed. In the Hall of North American Mammals, I made my way down a dark corridor to the squirrel diorama to admire their plump, fleshy bodies. I even began to study them in storybooks I read to my daughters. Squirrel Nutkin and his brother Twinkleberry would never hold weight as taxidermic reference at the Smithsonian, but Beatrix Potter's illustrations nicely capture the idiosyncrasies of the species.

My daughters, innocent accomplices, picked up on my interest and began to point out squirrels wherever we went: the playground, the schoolyard, the Halloween parade. The only people who make a concerted effort to watch squirrels in Brooklyn Heights are crazy people on the Promenade. I was paranoid that one of my neighbors would ask why we were so infatuated with squirrels and my older daughter would say, "My mother is