By Ann St. Martin Stout
Leaves Are Free
Traveling through Hudson, New York we stopped at Antiques Warehouse to stretch our legs.
Truly a repurposed warehouse, it was large, spacious, and chilly: 40,000 square feet of stuff. The kitchen and gardening tools your grandmother had, the machines your grandfather worked on, furniture, cabinetry and windows removed from houses, antiques of every sort.
We had nothing particular in mind as the wrought iron fencing (for sale) guided us to the door. We stalled, looked around and finally took a step. Cool stuff was everywhere. No list could cover it all.
Stepping into the Antiques Warehouse reminded me of a John Steinbeck passage from “Travels with Charley in Search of America.” “… the population of the thirteen colonies was less than four million souls” and that “every one of them must have been frantically turning out tables, chairs, China, glass, candle molds, and oddly shaped bit of iron, copper, and brass for future sale to twentieth-century tourists.”
When he wrote that in his early 1960 journey across America, would he have realized that in the first quarter of the 21st century we’d still be seeking out antique treasures?
But what caught my mind, my curiosity, and my imagination was an area displaying taxidermized animals. Every imaginable small mammal, from squirrels and foxes to larger mammals including the head of an American Bison was on display. The collection amassed from small game hunters to trophy hunters was astounding.
The rest of the Warehouse awaited me but I could not pull myself away from gazing at the giraffe. The stuffed giraffe, standing 15 feet tall, was a perfect specimen. Such a graceful, yet awkward animal. Its long tough tongue, its long neck and legs (with just seven vertebrae like humans), its appearance so different from other mammals. The Creator has the ultimate imagination.
I examined the hair closely, described as short, wiry hair.
Under the hair, I learned that giraffes have “very thick skin that acts like a compression suit, to prevent blood from pooling, due to their high blood pressure.” I would imagine these fascinating animals required high blood pressure to get oxygen to the brain.
Killing of animals to display them has somewhat of a controversial history, I would think. When we see a deer head mounted on a den wall, it is likely the meat had been used for food. The head and shoulders is leftover of legitimate consumption. Ethical and environmental concerns are the most vocal concerns. Giraffes are protected by law in some countries, though there is no international law protecting them.
When it comes to a giraffe, hmmm, I think the animal was not killed for food, but rather as a “trophy.”
But the term “taxidermy” brought me to a familiar corner of my brain — word origin. Having some knowledge of Greek and Latin root words is just enough to get me excited about etymologies. In Greek, the word “taxis” means arrangement; the word “derma” mean skin.
Coined in the early 19th century, taxidermy means to “prepare, stuff, and mount skins of animals with lifelike effect”. We are familiar with “derma” for skin knowing words like dermatitis (inflammation of the skin) or dermatologists (skin doctor) or even a product called Dermabond (adhesive to create a false skin on small wounds).
But learning the word “taxis” for “arrange” brought me on a different path. The word taxonomy is the practice of scientifically arranging names. For example, Lupus is the name for wolf in Latin, and it is preceded by the word Canis to show it belongs in dog family; the grey wolf species is C.lupus.
And there, dear readers, is how. For better or for worse, my mind works — from antiques to classification of animals, all in one fell swoop.
