;)
SECOND PLACE: Marisa Rand
1 CommentI made the hour and a half long trip from my mother’s house in southern Maryland to my apartment in Baltimore quite often. One day, about 20 minutes out, I passed a dead fox on the side of the road. Usually I did not stop for things on busy roads… not because I was afraid of what people might think, but the logistics of stopping and picking up road kill made me nervous. I reminded myself of that, plus the fact that my freezer was full, and that I had lots of work to do when I got back to the apartment. I kept on driving feeling sorry for the fox, but knowing logically I could not stop.
But the image of the fox stayed burned in my mind, pulling at me to turn around. I thought it would go away the further I got, but it turned out to do the opposite. At the half way mark I gave up fighting it, turned around, and drove all the way home. I nervously asked my mom to drive me back to that spot, since I still felt uncomfortable about stopping on the busy bend of highway myself. The need to collect the fox outweighed the awkwardness of asking her to do this. She said yes, and we drove off armed with trash bags and rubber gloves.
She stopped the car on the side of the road about 10 feet in front of the fox. He was a handsome gray fox, with a full fluffy coat of fur, lying on his side halfway in a puddle of muddy water. My heart sank when I noticed his innards were outside of his battered body. I could not salvage his whole pelt as I had intended. I half thought of leaving without him, but his perfect face called to me and we managed to get him into a large black trash bag and placed it in the trunk.
When we got back to her house, I skinned his face and neck and put it into a tanning solution so I could mount it later. I buried his body in the small animal graveyard I had in the back woods. The idea of what to do with the fox cape came easily and intuitively. I mounted him on a very regal looking shoulder manikin, and even took him with me on a trip to Virginia a few days later so I could babysit him as he dried and preen his whiskers.
I had a plaque laser cut out of clear plexiglass to mount him on, and installed LEDs inside the back of the manikin so they would radiate light into and out of plaque, and rays of light shone outward surrounding him on the wall. He was the star piece of my college thesis show. When I sold him a year later, I cried. He had gone from the broken body in the mud puddle to be a gorgeous regal creature to be admired.
By Marisa Rand
Reader Comments (1)
Your sweet fox speaks to me, too. I'm glad you went back for him. I thought the beautiful picture was just creative photography, but you did a wonderfully creative mount. I bet the person who him now loves him very much and I know he must be much admired by all!