Misforunate lions

Vivian has been doing taxidermy as long as he has. She has never killed anything, and although she’s not squeamish about the idea of seeing the animals dead, she does prefer them alive.

“To me, I like animals. I didn’t want to kill them,” Vivian says. “If they’re already dead, it’s OK.”

Because she focused on making the animals look nice from the start, Vivian says dealing with their skins didn’t faze her.

“I was like that tomboy person,” Vivian says. “So it didn’t really bother me.”

“Me, I like the weird stuff.
The bigger, the better.”

And she doesn’t mind tackling the hard jobs like birds, a meticulous task that entails arranging the feathers and body. Tom hates working on the birds.

“Me, I like the weird stuff,” he says. “The bigger, the better.”

He mentions a lion they have in their showroom. It was being used for a television commercial several years ago and got loose.

“Misfortune came to him. And we got a lion out of the deal,” he says. “Poor guy.”

These days Tom doesn’t have much time to hunt as he’s focused on the ever-increasing workload that stretches on all year long, from season to season. There are hunters from around the area counting on them to mount their animals. For a hunter, the mounted animals are trophies, and they are important, Tom says. While hunters are “out playing,” Vivian and Tom are inside working.

The barn where they do the work is sparse with skins tacked to the walls and tools arranged tidily. It’s cold as winter nears, and Vivian leads a tour, standing in an enveloping, puffy blue winter coat.

Upstairs, she will cut notches into poly-urethane molds that will soon hold deer antlers. Near the saw, Tom opens a drawer of eyes lined on paper that they purchased from a company that makes glass eyes for people.

“The eyes are the window to the soul,” Tom says. “They’re the hardest thing to do.”

In a dark cubbyhole on the first floor, Tom paints fish.

“You’re the eccentric artist,” Vivian says to Tom. His little corner is lined with paints, brushes and labeled pictures of fish. Over the years, he’s learned just the right techniques and colors for each specimen.

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