SEP-A-13
A
SERIES OF TAXIDERMY PICKUPS
AND A QUICK TRIP TO THE EASTERN SHORE TO
VISIT THE SCHAEFERS, AND TO ZIMMERMAN’S IN PENNSYLVANIA
TO
PICK UP THE KAMCHATKA SNOW SHEEP RAM
Sep.
5—8, 2002
I have still been not so much stunned, as rather expecting, the reversals of my long range plans with respect to this last try at getting a thesis committee to approve a thesis proposal; but there is a charade going on that this is an interdisciplinary program, but the only thesis language is that of a post-modernism \standard library mining of the pantheon of Michel Foucault and the literary canon of the last score of years, and nothing outside a litany of Learned Lumber with a footnote-studded reference to all these canonical texts is acceptable. “So, why don’t you wrestle with the thesis of Foucault on ‘Subjectivity?’” was one response. In other words, this is not your original thesis, but we will only read the kinds of things we have already read and continue to write.
One other frustration had been the redevelopment plan for Derwood, but the taxidermy plans were to coincide with the completion of the new game room—right about now. So, I came back from the Eastern Shore and my visit to Craig, and went directly to North American Taxidermy. There I talked with Jim, and even Mark, who had not been cooperative before, got out the bushbuck cape from the freezer they had held for the last dozen years, even though it had already been tanned in Nico van Rooyen’s Taxidermy in South Africa, and I packaged it up for delivery to Zimmerman when I picked up the Snow sheep ram on Saturday, along with the skull which I already had in my house. They were planning to take a wall of the shop out to get the big Siberian elk out, but I thought it could be turned around the corner, which it did happen to do without even taking anything down from the walls. So, I got the Byk Moral stag over to Derwood, and the notes for each plaque ready for Zimmerman as well as the bushbuck for him to process, and got ready to go up to Pennsylvania with Dale Kramer on Saturday morning.
I drove up to Walkersville, a few miles from Frederick where Dale lives, and has a room showing off his bow hunt trophies, and we took the seats out of his van, under the naïve hope, even after I showed him the Zimmerman photo of the ram in its full mount on natural glacial habitat, yet we also pulled his frame trailer, which can hold two large four wheelers. We drove up to Martinsburg PA into the good black dirt farming of the horse drawn hay rakes of the Amish farmers. Marcus and Kenny Zimmerman are a pair of Amish brothers, and have a very prosperous and tidy business, set into the gardens and farm fields of rolling hills behind their studio, now in the process of being expanded on a pad with radiant heat coils in the cement pad under the floors. The house and studio were both open, but other than some construction workers at the expansion, we saw no one. What we did see made us blink.
Besides lots of bow range targets in the back yard, there ware a series of penned deer, with two bucks that are spectacular trophies. Marcus has always kept penned deer as an aid in getting realistic life mounts for his taxidermy, but after fifteen years, he has selected their genes as well, and has bred some demonstration champion bucks. Behind Marcus’s house is a stables as pretty as the house and gardens, with an interesting juxtaposition: besides a large riding lawn mower is the Amish horse buggy for getting around. Apparently Marcus can get a ride in a car if someone else is driving it, but he cannot fly, so he is limited to the local area as a Pennsylvania deer bow hunter. We later found out that he was out this Saturday, having ridden down to Maryland with a friend to get venison by special crop damage permit in Maryland. In other words, doing what I should have been doing on Thursday night!
We peeked through the windows of the workroom, where the studio used to be, and saw five enormous Kodiak brown bears in standing whole mounts. The biggest one was a ten and a half foot bear. They each had very interesting artistic expressions on their faces. In one corner of what was formerly their workroom is the only exotic full mount in the shop---my Kamchatka Full Mount Snow Sheep Ram. I could not see a plaque on it although I had sent up the information with the hide and head. We could not see as much as what I had seen before when visiting, but then I saw the keys in the side door, and simply walked in. Dale and I went around taking pictures, and admiring the display stuff we could see, but most of what I had once seen, I learned later was in the barn in storage until the new studio is completed.
We found that out when someone was struggling to get in the door, and I helped then introduced myself to Jason Stoneburger, who is the only other taxidermist to work here, besides the brothers Kenny and Marcus, and they are the only ones who do the full mounts and they always work on them together. Jason has been here nine years in the small group that the Zimmermans do not want to grow, since they already have enough work and they want control over it to give only the highest quality output. Less than 10% of their work is deer, and they refuse fish and birds, so they are dong big trophy mammals for only museum quality or higher order customers. Jason himself is going out to set up a taxidermy school and the number will be back to just Kenny and Marcus again, and they are expanding both their workspace and a new studio—so it will be a good time to come up later when that is finished---about the time I should be ready to come up to collect my bushbuck---and, who knows, drop off my next trophy!
I registered in my bushbuck and paid half of its fee and the entire hefty fee for the magnificent snow sheep—and what a work it is! It is on a hardwood base, with big casters under it. It is standing in a slightly down hill posture on a glacier, with snow and icicles and a bit of high altitude moss. The ram itself is magnificent, of course, but you will see that in the photos I have taken and the subsequent steps we took to return it to Derwood. There was no way it was going inside the van. We called up Burget’s farm supplies and hardware, and then went over to buy a large tarp with grommets and a tie-down strap and twenty five feet of rope and nylon webbing. If we were going to tow the trailer, the ram would be whipped by heavy wind, and if it were not a high quality construction, it would be battered and scattered. Jason put blocks under the trailer and sent screws into the cross frame of the hardwood base to anchor it well, and we wrapped it in the tarp and tied it all down with the ropes and straps with twine cinching the tarp. The wind at highway speed shattered the tarp, but the trophy mount held up through the 160 mile trip.
Dale and I stopped at New Frontier family restaurant along the Juniata River for an all-you-can-eat dinner, and we talked about George Service’s offer to me of the Ibex hunt out of the Kyrgistan camps set up for the later Marco Polo hunters in November. Both Dale and his boss might be interested, and his boss, Gerry (D G Liu) of the construction firm who will be doing my remodeling when it comes to finally happen, might be interested, so I put them in touch with George Service through my phone. Dale and I might go goose hunting or bow hunting at a later time as well. We also swapped pictures of his mission trip to Honduras to work on a church-sponsored trip to do construction at an orphans and “street kids” school put up as a “faith mission” by an Ohio farmer, and he looked over one of several photo albums I had brought on the Himalayas.
We got to Derwood, and unscrewed the mount from the trailer and got it inside uneventfully. It should have taken the place designed for it in the game room, but, at present, it joined the other heads in what is a temporary dining room perch with most of the taxidermy, including now the big Byk Moral in the basement, awaiting this development. Any day now, the brown bear I have had done in Knight’s Taxidermy Anchorage after being forwarded out of Kamchatka Russia, should arrive, as should the pair of foxes I have in Parker’s Taxidermy in Willards, Maryland. So, I am finally getting—not all my ducks in a row—but the mammals coming in to Derwood.
A TALE OF A WEBER GRILLE
I took off with Joe at 5:30 AM in the dark. We ran a very brisk pace for a good turn around loop, coming back into hundreds of my MCRRC colleagues who had set out at 7:00 AM from Grosvernor on a Point-To-Point. We finished in time for both of us to be back home early—Joe, before his family was up, so he could go to mass later, and me, to do laundry and chores before going to DCCRC. On my way back home, I tried to renew library books on tape at the libraries whose posted signs say they should be open but were not, and then passed my neighbor Mansonson on Kipling Road.
Out in front was a sign on a Weber gas grill: “It works and It is Free.” I stopped and checked it out, and it looked like an ideal addition to the deck when it is built, sort of like the trophies being here before the game room. I went home and came back in shorts and tee shirts to wheel it down the hill on the street as it, made lots of noise rattling its component parts. Then I came to the gravel driveway and had a hard time pushing and pulling it uphill as everything attached to it fell off. But, it was only when I hoisted it at last onto the cement pad at the back door where, having cleaned it all up, I was going to put the grille cover over the top of it. As I made this final lift, everything fell apart. The grille had been intact and working at the top of Kipling Road, but by the rattling and jostling it got on the long hard trek into the Derwood woods, every weld had broken. So, this is the picture of futility---having invested ALL the hard work over two hours in getting it where it needed to be, it was a disconnected pile of rubble when it finally arrived at where it should have been ready to get put to work.
At least all the parts are there whenever anyone handier than I might be interested in reassembling it with all new screws and welds—but it certainly was a good idea of mine!
NEXT WEEK’S “SEP-B” SCHEDULE
I have a number of events in the coming week: first is the decision on whether to simply bag the entire PhD thesis prospect after twelve years, six in classes and six after Comps ingathering the experience they did not want to hear about. Having paid all the tuition, written all the papers, done the languages and superexceeded the required course work, and coming out of it with nothing at all at the final step, is EXACTLY like the wonderful acquiring of the Weber Gas Grille!
Second is a meeting of the International Society for Panetics, followed by Election Day.
Then comes the magic day---September 11. I will go down to the same DCA at the same time to check in at the same gate for the same trip to the same meeting as I was trying to accomplish on September 11, 2001. This time, I will be flying on September 11, the Lord willing, to Greenville/Spartanburg airport to rent a car and proceed to High Hampton Inn in Cashiers NC for the Halsted Society meeting that was the destination I would have achieved last year when I got to Boston by Acela Express Amtrak to find that meeting canceled. We can only wait to see what this year may bring.