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

of the guys, Dave, was from Louisiana; he had on a CRAWFISH TIME T-shirt. He and an official named Carl carried the squirrel to the far back corner, directly behind an island of deer heads. They set it on a long table marked NOVICES.

Dave said, "How many pieces do you see like that squirrel? None. How many squirrels do you see like that? Every day!" This buoyed my confidence, making me feel less the waxidermist—until Carl pointed to the crowd that had gathered in the middle of the ballroom. They were excited about something, but I couldn't see what. Looming high in the air above their heads, however, was the most stupendous, most glorious set of antlers imaginable. "Look at the Irish stag over there," Carl said. "That's a pretty unique deal there. Obviously, it's extinct. He used three different skins to make it, and he actually got the pattern off of ancient cave paintings. Those antlers are like nine feet across!"

It was the biggest, most powerful stag in the ballroom, and people were drawn to it like a doe to a lek. Ken Walker had arrived the day before; now he was in Re-Creations, touching up his rack, which had got scuffed up in the cargo trailer during the thirty-hour drive from Alberta. "Customs went great," he boasted. "I'm sure it was that Smithsonian stamp in my passport!"

Walker no longer resembled Grizzly Adams. He had shaved and cut his hair. He worked the crowd. "I took a huge chance," he told his fans. "It's a gorgeous animal. Moose are impressive, but they're ugly. This is beautiful. You can see the light through the septum! I'm happy. You can give me a pink ribbon, a purple ribbon...," he said, beaming. "Hopefully on Saturday, I'll be able to sing. They have a karaoke machine and everything." His eyes radiated the excitement of pulling off the impossible. Walker had wrestled with prehistory and won.

Now he had to beat the score sheet. It should be easy, considering he was the only competitor in Re-Creations. Everyone else had dropped out. "No one wanted to lose to a Canadian's fake animal," he said with a shrug.

I congratulated Colette and said it must be a relief to be here. She shook her head and said, "Show me the money!" Then Ken sprinted downstairs to the trade fair to raid the Russian-made lion eyes before they were sold-out.

Downstairs, in the café, Mayer's assistants, Dave Spaul and Carl Church, were drinking cans of Red Bull. They've worked with Mayer for years: they've gone to Hirst openings with her, seen her spend an entire week painstakingly mixing colors for cow hooves, and watched her collapse from exhaustion on the kitchen floor. They know that this type of devotion is absurd, that no matter how hard a taxidermist tries, he or she can never bring the animal back to life, yet they admire her persistence. Still, they wondered how the Americans would view her rats. "At our shows, we accept her work as different and outrageous because she's known for that, but out here it could be viewed differently. She's never been judged before by people who know so much about anatomy and techniques," said Spaul.

Church added, "It could offend people. It's like the testicle thing. I must have seen a dozen white-tailed deer eating corn on the cob. There's nothing wrong with that, but you'd never see a white-tailed deer in a gallery. But you would see Emily's work in an art gallery in London and see it next to a Damien Hirst, and it wouldn't look out of place."

At two P.M., Mayer, with a final fluff with a paintbrush, surrendered her rats to the show officials who carried them inside for judging. I headed over to Novices through flocks of vibrant birds and deer galore: whole deer; truncated deer; deer transformed into planters; deer hollowed out into fountains with running water; deer trapped in barbed wire. One deer display was extraordinarily weird: two deer heads stuck to a frozen pole by only their outstretched tongues. The title rivaled that of a Damien Hirst sculpture: As in Nature, One Hand Helps to Feed the Other, Just Like in Life We Can Always Use the Help of Another.

Novices was filled with mounts from as far away as Australia (a kangaroo head) and as nearby as Waynesburg, Ohio (a turkey), and Belding, Michigan (a yellow perch). I scanned the rival mallard hen, the bufflehead, and the gray fox. A trio of pintails named Rites of Spring sat near the panfish dubbed Last Day of School. In the middle of the table, a Milltown gray squirrel raced across a wire.

People stopped by to comment. John Schmidt, the master sculptor who makes manikins for Van Dyke's supply company, said, "Ain't no country squirrel. Usually you see cornstalks and that kind of stuff instead of wires. You didn't use a form—that makes you a sculptor."

Markku Natri from Finland said, "It looks like a cat."

Then Roger Martin, the guy who had donated 250 specimens for the Behring hall, said, "You're one of the smartest competitors I've ever seen. All you can see is the light bulb. It's like looking straight into the sun. Everything is in plain view, but you can't see it. Great strategy!"

Finally, Mayer approached. She glared at my squirrel and snarled, "It looked like a football. But now it looks like a baseball. It's better than that trumpeter swan in murky water that looks like a coffin."

At the WTC, it is customary for the judges to critique all the mounts to help competitors improve as taxidermists. My judge, Jessica Stevens, a pretty blonde from Alabama in a leopard-print cardigan, gave my squirrel an 85, a second-place ribbon, but ticked my score sheet with numerous violations. She glanced at the squirrel, took a deep breath, and led off with the positive: "I know it's an urban squirrel. You used your imagination." She smiled again. Then she continued: "Anywhere you have shrinkage, I want