Shot, stuffed and mounted ... part one

You have waited long and with much anticipation. You want to know how the other half lives. Here's how it unfolded:

First, the drive: it's Illinois. If you've travelled through Illinois, you know that I need say no more. If you have not had the pleasure of visiting this fine flat state, you should know that my describing this two-hour drive would seriously hamper any pains I have taken to make this an interesting story.

Springfield is a small town boasting their claim as the hometown of the late great President Abraham Lincoln, and home to Lincoln Land Community College. A haven for mediocre strip mall developers, Springfield plays host to America's most heralded fast food chains and one particularly tasty Thai restaurant. The Crowne Plaza Hotel, home of the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships, towers over the highway, a beast of a building amidst a field of manicured lawns and hot black parking lots. My partner in crime drives a truck, and for this we were thankful. I don't think there was a single passenger car tucked in among the rows of pickup trucks and trailers.

After checking in and receiving our press passes from an unpleasant, Aqua-Net addicted woman at the Crowne reception desk, I rode the escalator with my favorite photo-maker to the mezzanine level where the judging of the World was taking place. Cigarette smoke was easing into the main hallway from a tapestried smoking lounge on the far side of the hotel, men in foam trucker caps and tight-fitting stonewashed jeans were congretating near the snack counter, and a weathered gentleman in a tan Izod jacket was standing at the ready to check our credentials.

We passed into the restricted access area, the main ballroom of the hotel where the Championship entries were being stroked, poked, tugged, and peered into by about fifteen judges. We were sternly warned against bothering the judges and allowed into the main judging area, where we were surrounded by hundreds of heads and whole bodies of mounted animals, divided into the Masters division, the Professional division, and the (often amusing) Novice division.

The sheer magnitude was disorienting. I had entered a dimension inhabited solely by heads and torsos of furry mammals and their slick, shiny fishy friends. There were the standard deer heads (staring, sniffing the wind, rubbing their antlers on tree stumps, caught in barbed wire), some with the beginnings of their front legs mounted but cut off at the knee to stand floating eerily amongst reeds or fake stone outcroppings. There was a creepy display of two deer heads poised as if standing around a frozen lamp post (complete with fake icicles, snow drifts, and stuffed squirrels crawling down from above). One deer had gotten his fat pink tongue stuck to the frozen pole while the other rubbed his antlers on the pole near the ground. No amount of commentary on my part could do this piece justice.

Joining the deer for this party at the Crowne were gads of turkeys (fighting, flying, lying dead in faux grass), bears (growling, roaring, swiping at prey), wild boar, elk, fish, badgers, snakes, alligators (one alligator eating a snake), mice, bats, zebras, coyotes (hunting, howling, sleeping), foxes, raccoons, wolves, and mountain lions. There was a bengal tiger, a kangaroo, and a black-and-white colobus monkey. There were baby animals, including a farmhouse display of a full-body colt, newborn pig, and various duck hatchlings. You name it, they've probably mounted it.

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Dear reader, there is so much more to tell. But it's getting to be late and I need my beauty rest. I still haven't downloaded my recorded interviews with taxidermists, hunters, judges, and trade show salesmen. And I haven't shared with you the answers to the pressing, vexing questions I posed in an earlier posting.

I will be writing again very soon. Hang tight.