Van Hoesen is a former junior high school science teacher with a passion for felines, especially lynx and bobcats. After attending her first taxidermy competition in the 1980s, she was appalled by the ferocity of the mounts. Determined to depict animals humanely, she decided to eschew prefab anatomy (aggressive and mean) and cast her own custom bobcat (playfully stretching). She entered the bobcat into the 1992 World Show, took Best in World Mammal, and inspired many followers. "I really love the fluidity and gracefulness of the animals and the wonder of their movement," she said. "I don't like to see them snarling. That's more of a he-man thing. After all, how many women and families with kids want to have a vicious, snarling cat in their living room?"
This may explain why the shoppers at the fair were predominantly men. Even so, van Hoesen was inspecting howling, snarling, and panting tongues and talking shop with the Jaw Juice owner. She agreed to try his new bobcat jaw set, then examined his fake coyote throats and beaver teeth, explaining in a teacherly voice how beaver teeth are self-sharpening and grow throughout a beaver's lifetime. I had not seen any self-sharpening, ever-growing beaver teeth so far, but where artificial tongues are sold, there's bound to be fake saliva. Jaw Juice! "It's kind of niche," said the owner's son. I nodded. Then he squeezed a dribble of it (a clear adhesive) onto an artificial coyote tongue ("panting") and dried it with his own breath.
Before the World Show, I half jokingly told the Schwendemans that I'd come back to New Jersey so transformed and excited about taxidermy that I'd want to mount something myself. But now as I riffled through "how to stuff a squirrel" videos, my mind swirling with detached limbs and a sea of flat fur, glass eyes, and a freeze-dried monkey before me, I felt a dull nausea rise up, and I doubted that I could skin and stuff a chicken.
Just then, Ken Walker, who was strolling from booth to booth, stopped by. Walker has the alert eyes of a hunter, and those eyes landed on the manuals in my hands before I could hide them. I didn't want to get him going. There's nothing Walker likes more than to convince someone to pick up a scalpel for the first time. His face lit up. He launched into a mini-version of his lecture upstairs customized for a wary outsider. Within seconds, he handed me a manual and a video for the aspiring squirrel stuffer. I hesitated. I wasn't sure I wanted to buy these things just now, but then I remembered how he had told his seminar audience that he never takes the safe road, and I paid up. After that, Walker led me to another booth so that I could see his red fox display. Its silky fur was so smooth that I petted it impulsively, forgetting how important coat sheen is to a taxidermist. Before I could muster an apology, Walker had grabbed a comb from his back pocket and fluffed it back up.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the judges, having already selected the winner in each category, were wrangling over which one would win Best of Show. In a way, the job was ludicrous, because the judges had to compare a bison with a Gene Simmons (of Kiss) tongue to a bogus giant panda to a pair of delicate tree sparrows. I could sense the rivalries among the various factions, especially between the bird and deer judges. ("The deer guys are neurotic, and the bird guys are nuts," explained Paul Rhymer, a Smithsonian taxidermist whose father and grandfather also had worked for the museum.) Eventually, the judges handed their ballots to head judge Wesley "Skip" Skidmore, curator of animals at Brigham Young University's Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum. The winner would be announced that night at a banquet in the Grand Hyatt ballroom.
I retreated to my room to dress for the ceremony. With its mundane décor, creature comforts, and view of Hooter's, the room had no regional feel. It was certainly devoid of taxidermy's roiling subculture. It was, in a nutshell, predictable, and I embraced its blandness. I tossed my purchases into my suitcase so that I didn't have to look at them, then opened the mirrored closet doors and selected an outfit. As I slipped into black dress pants and a trim brown turtleneck, then tied a giraffe-print scarf around my neck in a fashionable knot, I suspected that my outfit was all wrong; it was far too casual.
And it was. The World Show banquet wasn't a church picnic in the boondocks, but the Grand Ole Opry, the Academy Awards, and the Super Bowl halftime show combined. The women arrived in long shimmering gowns, festooned with bright jewelry. The men, shaved and showered and camo-less, were dressed in dark suits and ties or dress shirts and slacks. Larry Blomquist, the master of ceremonies, wore a black tuxedo; his cohost and wife, Kathy, wore a sleek black gown and cherry red lipstick. Everyone was dressed to kill.
The mood was buoyant, convivial, familial, as everyone exchanged greetings, bought rounds of drinks, and found seats among their friends. Ray Hatfield tried to tame his lively daughters. Skip Skidmore, Jack Fishwick, and Ken Walker resembled corporate lawyers. As they made their way to their tables, stopping to chat and shake hands along the way, it was hard to picture young Skidmore preserving his pet hamster Little Nipper, Walker tracking bears, or Fishwick
