The lights dimmed for a moment of silent reflection, followed by the Lord's Prayer, recited in unbroken unison. Then two teenage girls in prom gowns sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." During the national anthem, I glanced at my paper place mat with its photo of geese flying over a taxidermy trout and logos for the National Rifle Association, the National Wild Turkey Federation, and the Safari Club International, the largest hunting lobby in the world. Our caesar salads arrived, and the ceremony began in earnest.
Seated on my left, a trade-show salesman from Louisiana described his fear of Chicago; he expressed his reluctance to soak in the hotel's hot tub because of its potential to double as a toilet. A fresh-faced blond taxidermist from Michigan sat across from us. Stories of his African bow-hunting adventures kept me riveted during what turned out to be a very long evening.
In the end, the ceremony resembled a large family reunion, an American jamboree. But the family wasn't too insular to keep the Best of Show prize from going to a European—Uwe Bauch, for his tree sparrows. As we left the ballroom, I asked everyone why the tree sparrows had taken the top prize and not, say, the bison. Over and over, they repeated—as if it were obvious—essentially the same answer: the sparrows looked truly alive.
Aside from an excursion or two, I hadn't left the hotel in five days. While I was packing the next morning, I began to feel like I was trapped in a tightly sealed diorama. I needed some fresh air.
Through the window, high above the parking lot, I watched Ray Hatfield roll his African lion back to his cargo trailer. His wife pushed the sandstone base. They trudged in single file, their daughters straggling a few paces behind. Hatfield hadn't won any of the top prizes. His lion and snow leopard had taken second place in their respective categories. "The judging was really difficult this year," he later said matter-of-factly, and he was right. The low scores arguably reflected the most intense scrutiny ever witnessed at an American taxidermy competition. In fact, after the show several people complained to the promoters that the judging had been too harsh and nitpicky. Hatfield, however, wasn't among them. Yes, the judging had been painstaking and exacting. "But that's good," he said, squinting in the bright sunlight. Good for taxidermy.
As three grimacing men hoisted the lion into the trailer, I pictured father, mother, and daughters driving along Dirksen Parkway en route to Cody, Wyoming, delivering the moose, the elk, and the mule deer mounts on the way. But the World Show wasn't entirely over. That night was the BYOB wind-down party: a few more hours of solidarity before everyone headed back to their individual workshops.
The distinct shadow of a bird of prey appeared at the edge of the parking lot, and I unlatched the window and leaned out to see whether it was the same counterfeit hawk I'd seen when I'd arrived. The air was cool and invigorating, and as I craned my neck to find the source of the shadow, a real bird cried out, eerily piercing the silence. It was probably some common bird—a grebe, perhaps, or a killdeer—but its call was strong and clear and full of life.
3. THE MAN WHO HUNTED FOR SCIENCE
VETERINARIAN-RADIOLOGIST William J. Hornof is x-raying dead elephants to see if they can be saved. "It's too late. They're dead," he jokes as he walks under the biggest bull, a regal specimen shot in 1910 by taxidermist-explorer Carl Akeley after two years of hunting. (Only two-hundred-pound tusks would do!) The bull measures roughly ten feet six inches at the shoulders and twelve feet at the top of its head and appears to extend its trunk as if disturbed by an intruder. It's one of eight freestanding elephants that form the monumental centerpiece of the American Museum of Natural History's Akeley Hall of African Mammals. And Hornof, a silver-haired Californian with radiant blue eyes, is in New York City on this sunny June day in 2004 to see whether the museum can prevent them from suffering a second death—that caused by too much petting. Lately the elephants have also been fraying around the ears from something completely foreign to their central African habitat: air conditioning.
Usually the hall swarms with excited schoolchildren. "Hello, little gorilla!" they shriek, pressing their noses to the diorama glass as they have for more than seventy years to see if the gorillas will tumble and bark and beat their chests. Sometimes the kids draw the scene as if it is actually the Congo, not viewing an exact replica—they haven't lost the ability to imagine that it is real. Naturalists and artists come here to escape the city. The hall is a shrine for everyone at the World Taxidermy Championships who considers Carl Akeley the greatest taxidermist who ever lived.
Of all the early taxidermists, Akeley is the one I found most intriguing. He lived during taxidermy's golden age, when taxidermists of his stature traveled in sophisticated circles, were handsomely paid, and made astonishing exhibitions. The French have a word for work of his magnitude: naturalisation. Naturalisation is the gourmandise (gluttony) of taxidermy. No one consumed nature like Carl Ethan Akeley.
In his era, Akeley was famous. His adventures still draw comparisons to Indiana Jones and other swashbucklers. But Indiana Jones never killed a leopard by shoving a bare fist down its throat, sewed the scalp back onto a mauled Nandi spearman, or raised a vervet monkey on Central Park West. (J.T. Jr. had her own bedroom.) Mostly Akeley is known for blazing a trail that took taxidermy from the single menagerie specimen to the majestic diorama, which is why it made sense for me to start my search for him here, at his masterpiece, African Hall.
But on the day I show
