She shined her penlight onto the right hind leg. She examined its narrow face, directing the light onto its eyes. "Its eyes are not in alignment." She grabbed a photograph of a squirrel. "This is what we're trying to achieve. See how soft he looks? Around the mouth is where you had the most problems. Make the mouth slot as small as possible. Tuck it from the outer corners in toward the center—that applies to deer or bobcats or whatever. Tuck in your nose..." The nose. I was in trouble. The poor thing would have suffocated if it had been alive, which it was not, a fact that offered some comfort as Stevens pointed out more faults with my anthropomorphic double. "You've got to put pins or something in the nostrils. If you're going to be a squirrel taxidermist, you've got to start looking at squirrels." I lowered my head and nodded.
"It's going to be hard to get this personal reference unless you're at a zoo and can get some good photos. The basics are still there. This animal is harder than any large animal because of the details—the tiny feet, the tail. I would never be a squirrel taxidermist. I have to for my clients, but they're not my love. Your love may be squirrels, because you're not going to come upon a bobcat in the city." Again she was right.
She flashed an incandescent smile and continued. This was humbling, but I took it seriously. "You're dealing with such delicate features. You're dealing with a tail that has a bone, and if the bone doesn't come out intact, you can't get the fluff or the flow. If you tear a squirrel tail up, you're not going to duplicate its expression. You've got to learn to blow it out with a hair dryer. I don't want it blown out like a porcupine, but it should be soft like you see in nature. It's hard to duplicate what God made. They are like people. They are not all the same."
She paused, working up her nerve. She was about to ask me to feel the squirrel's genitals. I grimaced. I arched a skeptical eyebrow. I stared right into her eyes. She stared right back. Neither of us was smiling. Then, reluctantly, I reached in and felt around. I did not feel sex organs. What I felt was a thready knot. My squirrel was, anatomically speaking, a Barbie doll, as my editor later explained. Grinning, Stevens said, "We have to deal with genitals—whatever—especially with males. If it's just squished up there..." She paused, blushing. "It's hard to critique a life-size bear for a male [taxidermist], but you have to do it. And they have to deal with it."
Then she summed up: "I'm looking forward to you enjoying this—not just for your book. You might develop this into a hobby. You might become a competitive taxidermist. It's opened up a whole world to you that you never knew existed. This is an art, and now you appreciate that. You may have thought taxidermy was just stuffing an animal—mounting an animal—we hate that term. But it's an art. We don't want to be thought of as Norman Bates. We are artists, and we have a great respect for God's creatures."
That was the official critique. Now Jack Fishwick was walking toward Novices. He had just judged hundreds of birds, yet he had fuel for one last squirrel. "The light bulb's the wrong color! This should be the red-light district," he said disarmingly, before he went for the jugular. "Squirrels on wires aren't this shape. I don't think you fully understand what you are doing. The hips are two big lumps, and they stand out. The ears need to go in more. You should have taken two squirrels and skinned one to study its anatomy. You're blind! A lot of American taxidermists hunt turkey, and the closest they get is thirty yards before they die. I think it's very good for a first attempt ... but you have been hanging around taxidermists for the past two years—perhaps the best taxidermists in the world. You have an advantage! You are not starting at rock bottom. You have tons and tons of info you could have studied."
"I could spend thirty years studying Picasso, and when I'm done, I'm not going to be Picasso," I said.
"Taxidermy is not art. It's a highly skilled craft," he said.
"You mean I could be as good as Emily?"
"Yes—if you're dedicated enough. Anybody could be the best in the world. But not anybody has the dedication."
"What about the Carl Akeleys of the world?" I ventured.
"He wouldn't stand up to the work that's done today. Our best is better than he was. Mankind always improves."
Only in hindsight do I realize that he was right: my squirrel missed the mark because I didn't love it enough. I didn't have the reverential love for the species that consumes all great taxidermists, both in Carl Akeley's time and now.
In the end, Mayer took fourth place in Small Mammals. Her rats had tied for first place with a fawn and a cougar and its cub, but the judges considered erosion molding unconventional and gave her fourth place. They also docked the rats because their eyes were asymmetrical. After the show, Mayer said, "Animal faces are never symmetrical." She held a mirror up to half of her own face and said, "See how strange I'd look if my face were symmetrical. No one's face is symmetrical!" The big winner that day was the fawn, which took Best of Show.
That night, Fishwick was having dinner with a group of European taxidermists in the hotel restaurant. One of them
