Adriana Widdoes shadowed some serious contenders in Maine's taxidermy competition:
"Did you ever have a cat?" Tom Berube asks as I sit next to him in his workshop in Poland, Maine. When I arrived at Tom’s Avian Taxidermy at around ten in the morning, Tom had a small red squirrel half skinned and hanging by its feet from hooks on a moveable arm. But now, less than thirty minutes into our first meeting, Tom has the squirrel’s skin completely separated from the body. The hide is turned inside out and pulled taught over a large flat wooden stick, while the squirrel’s carcass, red and sinewy, lies gleaming on top of the Sports section of the Lewiston Sun Journal.
At sixty-two, Tom Berube is five feet eight inches tall, slim, and balding. … He whistles intermittently to Celtic music as he scrapes away at the squirrel’s hide using a heavy metal "fleshing" tool. "Fleshing," I am told, is an integral part of the taxidermy process; it involves stripping away the fat and muscle from an animal’s hide. Forget to "flesh" and your mount will start to smell, the excess tissue rotting slowly beneath the pelt. I watch as Tom carefully removes all traces of the squirrel’s flesh, leaving behind only the soft, buttery skin.
"Yes, I have a cat," I say. "My family’s Persian is not much bigger than a Maine red squirrel," I think but do not say out loud. Tom looks at me mischievously, then continues. "You know how when you rub a cat sometimes you can see the muscle rippling underneath the skin?" I try to remain detached. "Yes. Of course," I answer.
"That’s what this is!” Tom explains. "Underneath the skin is where all the muscle and fat is. You want to get rid of it."
And then there's "the world's hottest taxidermist," seen above.
The Dish 