In the beginning

Tom and Vivian are part-time taxidermists, people who take the skins of animals, pull them over a mold and attempt to make them look alive again. They’ve been doing it for 30 years, ever since Tom took a class through the mail that he found in the back of an issue of Field & Stream magazine.

It’s a craft both husband and spouse relish. It’s a craft that’s much different than most people think.

“Everyone goes, ‘Ew, taxidermy. Ew, gross.’ But we don’t get into guts and nasty stuff.”

“Most of the time,” Vivian adds with a sly smile.

“Everyone goes, ‘Ew, taxidermy. Ew, gross.’ But we don’t get into guts and nasty stuff.”

They operate Edsall’s Taxidermy Shop out of a two-story barn in their back yard. Tom spends a few hours most every day after work immersed in his passion, he says. Vivian, who does a great amount of work herself, puts in about six hours a day, starting in the early morning.

“You got to have a love for it, got to have a passion for it, or it don’t happen,” Tom says.

The couple married when Vivian was 17 and Tom was 18. Tom says jokingly that he “robbed the cradle” in high school.

Tom’s interest in the taxidermy started as a young hunter. After killing his animals, he’d try to mount them himself with the help of then-girlfriend, Vivian. Soon he was doing the work for friends and relatives. Later the husband and wife started a business.

“She was the brains, and I was the brawn,” Tom says. Vivian, he adds with pride, is one of the few women in the field, and he thinks she’s one of the best taxidermists in the area.

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