Preservation

8. Display the mount.

“Could you make it look more raccoon-y?”

My classmates cluck in agreement, as if Ambrose has said something profound. Ambrose, who only taxidermies reptiles because warm-blooded mammals “remind me too much of humans.” Everyone fawns over his holier-than-thou politics, as if his slimy geckoes aren’t just a cop-out to avoid stuffing anything larger than his penis. 

First rule of taxidermy school: you’re forbidden from defending your mount during critique. I stare at my raccoon instead of my classmates, wondering what’s not reading as raccoon. The glass eyes aren’t sewn in as tight as I would’ve liked, shrinking into their sockets like puddles drying up; the pose, a little awkward. I was going for bashful, like the raccoon was having second thoughts about rummaging through trash cans, but it looks more hungover, the black rings around its eyes like residual mascara. So, okay. Not my best work.

As I’m packing up, Ambrose and co. already filed out, my teacher (“call me Liam”) squats beside me. He’d been silent during critique. He places a hand on my lower back, so moist I’m sure it’ll leave a print, and slowly rubs. I don’t move, frozen in the position I’d imagined my raccoon: embarrassed stiff. 

“Good work. Good girl,” he says.

7. Reattach the skin to your plaster cast.

Scraped off the mold, the raccoon skin looks like a ratty blanket, torn in multiple places, its shifting shades of silver now a lifeless grey. Most likely, I’ll need to source a new raccoon. Or come up with another project entirely. The thought of jilting my raccoon for one of its brethren feels cruel, like sleeping with an ex’s cousin. 

I reach for my phone, planning to scroll through Pinterest for inspiration, then pause. A string of missed calls and texts from an unsaved number. I open the thread, then fling my phone across the room, where it shudders like one of Ambrose’s stupidly realistic rattlesnakes. Liam has messaged me at least five dick pics, captured from different perspectives, as if he is planning a taxidermy project and ensuring all angles are covered. 

I leave the phone there overnight. For the first morning in months, I wake up without an alarm, in time for the class I don’t attend.

6. Salt the hide—if your animal has especially thick skin, consider scoring it first, so the granules can fully penetrate.

No longer going to school, I lose all motivation to leave my apartment. I push off showering. I push off preserving the rabbit I ordered, even when the smell of decay starts to seep through the plastic packaging. I push off eating until late at night, when, experimentally, I pour special taxidermy salt into my pasta water. The noodles taste fine. Briny.

5. Remove the skull.

The only part of the animal used is the hide. Friends are grossed out by my mounts, refusing to touch them, even when I explain they’re only skin and plaster. Lately, I’ve felt like that: a mannequin draped in skin, alive-seeming.

Someone taps me on the shoulder. I am sitting on a park bench, face in palms, one of my few outdoor excursions. I look up and see Ambrose, wearing ridiculous, chunky headphones, eyes narrowed. “Where’s your head at?” he asks. I don’t respond but he sits next to me anyway.

4. Skin your animal, disposing of fat, muscle, organs, anything that will rot.

I’ve started working on my rabbit. The project feels beneath me, but I tell myself it’ll be done by the end of the week, that after this, I can switch disciplines. In a plastic grocery bag, the organs could be ripe, juicy plums.

I drive to campus, to the specific dumpster all taxidermy students are required to use. The trash room is small and stinky, set apart from the other buildings, and able to be locked from the inside. My hands are shaky, but I manage to get all the innards out. 

It’s when I’m leaving, just about to escape the smell of decomposing flesh, that Liam enters, his body blocking the door. His smile reveals crooked, coffee-stained teeth, the same color as my rabbit’s pelt. 

The fur I cry into when I get home, soft, soft like the inside of a thigh.

3. Assemble tools.

Pins. Gloves. Glass eyes. Paintbrushes. Scalpels. Galvanized wire. 

A rape kit? 

Nope. An alibi. A cleaver, the size of my forearm.

2. Gather measurements, data, specifics about the proper preservation process for your chosen species.

Liam is 5’11”, weighs around 180 pounds. His last class ends at 5 p.m. He lives 30 minutes from campus, 40 with traffic. On the way back, he stops by a liquor store, sometimes just for a six pack, but more often for a handle of vodka, which he carries gingerly, as if holding a bird with a broken wing. He idles in his car for at least five minutes, flipping through radio stations. The parking lot is usually deserted, his Honda, a singular red drop against the asphalt.

1. Procure your subject.