How did I miss this? In the latest New Yorker Magazine there was a notice: Great Autumnal Taxidermy Get Together to be held in Brooklyn (last year they held it in a bar). Unfortunately, it was held on Oct 28th. If there’s one thing I like better than a dead animal it’s a stuffed one. Now before you click away muttering “bloodthirsty”, remember that I write murder mysteries. Besides, skeletons are cool. Which is funny because I’m actually a bit squeamish when it comes to blood and muscle and sinew, but bones don’t bug me. I have several skulls at home, in fact, (my son dubs it House of Dead Things). We have a full sheep skull (they run sheep periodically nearby, or at least they used to before houses were built over their grazing grounds), we also have a coyote skull called Fang the Wonder Pup, a cat skull which was mentioned in a previous article, a rabbit skull, a mouse skull, and a seagull skull (all found). Someone gave us a cow skull as a gift which we dubbed Noel Cowhead. (What is this penchant for naming dead things?)
Anyway, as I said, I find skeletons immensely intriguing. But I also find the preserving of animals in their semi-natural state also intriguing. We were the recipients of a stuffed wolverine for no better reason than we knew what it was. (It's just like the one above but without a stand. Apparently, this is the traditional style in which to stuff a wolverine. Remember that, junior taxidermiests.)
But I wouldn’t mind owning more dead things.
Apparently, the Autumnal Get-Together is the brainchild of authors Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewsden who wrote “Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger". Last year’s event was a contest and I suppose that this year's is something of the same. One of the judges last year was Rob Marbury of the Minneapolis Association of Rogue Taxidermy. It is a web site that one must see to believe. Apparently, they don’t believe in merely stuffing the animal on its own. If it’s dead, why not pair it with another animal and just make something new? MART, I salute you, if for nothing else than appealing to my sense of the bizarre.
If anyone was in New York and did see this, please let me know how it was.
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