Last episodes of "American Stuffers"

Yes. It is with a heavy heart and a hanging head that I admit that today I actually watched the American Stuffers episodes on Animal Planet.

You have to understand, though. The satellite signals on the movie channels were spotty and there was nothing on network television worth watching. Plus -- and honestly, no disrespect to the Ross Family and their employees -- but the show is just like a really bad car wreck. You know you shouldn't look but once you do you just can't turn away from it.

I didn't watch all of the episodes today. I watched "The Dog Named Precious," "The Cat Without a Nose," "The Hairless Dog," and "A Tornado Hits Romance." I will say that I'm very glad Daniel was able to put the cat's nose back on before its owner came to pick it up (and no one noticed the problem). The skin coming off of the Chinese Crested (which the owner proudly stated she'd paid $250 as a puppy) though was a close one. And her having the dog's testicles removed to have sperm harvested by a company in Washington just had me rolling on the floor. Yeah, I'm not a biology major, but I can't imagine them living in there for very long, much less long enough to ship them to Washington from Texas (where they drove from to get the dog freeze-dried).

The pet chicken being freeze-dried, though, had me baffled. I know people keep chickens as pets. I have friends that have had good and bad things come from doing that. But if the chicken dies on its own, I'd be thinking about disposing of it correctly, not how it's going to look in the center of the dinner table as a centerpiece. Okay, the lady with the chicken actually said she was going to decorate her chicken coops with all of her pet chickens after they die and she has them freeze-dried. And she named all of them after characters from Jersey Shore. So, take from that what you want.

I can say that I was moved by the lady who had her Yorkie for 14 years and met the crew from Xtreme Taxidermy at the Big Buck Classic Hunters' Convention (where most of the other attendees were grossed-out by the pets on display). She'd had a lot of loss in her life and having her dog preserved as a way to help her cope may not be for me but I sure hope it helps her. Plus, she wants the dog buried with her when she passes away. Sadly, the dog will look better longer than she will, but at least they'll be together.

And I also have to admit that the story about the dog that had been skinned by another taxidermist and left the crew of the shop with a puzzle on how to make him look good again was interesting. Mostly because they were very careful to not tell the lady who brought in the dog how badly butchered the job the previous taxidermist did. I was glad to see that they were able to take that idiot's mistakes and fix it so the lady was happy. Now I just hope she doesn't watch the episode and see exactly what was done to her dog.

So, yeah, I let the redneck in me have a few laughs and sat agog at some of the things said/done on the show. There aren't any future episodes coming (it was cancelled), but Romance, Arkansas isn't too terribly far from my family's old stomping grounds. I'm pretty sure I could find it if I felt the need.

Rednecks with money equals "American Stuffers"

And just when you think you've about seen it all on television, along comes something else that makes you wonder, "Who comes up with this stuff?"

Now, I must confess that I like a lot of different shows. I don't like soap operas (daytime or nighttime) and I certainly don't like most sitcoms. The majority of the time you'll find my television tuned to History (even though they really don't show many historical shows anymore), Discovery (absolutely love Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs), Science Channel (I really would love to own a store like Oddities and the things they find are awesome), or BBC America (Top Gear, Doctor Who -- just a small sampling of the British shows I love). If I can find something educational I'll be more than happy to watch it over any tarted-up "reality show" where every other word has to be bleeped. I used to enjoy Hell's Kitchen but you can only listen to someone be so BLEEPingly BLEEP BLEEP without it getting really old.

So last night I sat down to surf the zillion channels available on satellite in the hopes of finding something, anything, worth watching. Occasionally I'll tune-in to Animal Planet. I like their shows Dogs 101 and Cats 101 and occasionally they have a few others that might hold my interest. I'd watch some of the animal rescue shows but then I'd just get upset seeing how people mistreat their pets and be in a crappy mood for the rest of the day. And don't get me started on Animal Hoarders -- we can't even have that show on because Youngest Son gets so angry at the people and cries when he sees the animals that can't be saved.

Suddenly, a show started from which I could just not look away. It wasn't in a "that's so incredibly awesome" sort of enrapturement as a "really bad car accident" kind of not being able to look away. Their new show was starting -- American Stuffers.

Now, if you've not heard of this show yet, I'd suggest you sit down before continuing because it is certainly not like any other reality show on television. The Ross family of Romance, Arkansas, owns and runs Xtreme Taxidermy. And when I say "family" I mean ALL of them. Mrs. Ross is a school teacher, but Mr. Ross and their three sons get very hands-on with the preparation of animals to be stuffed. There are also two other employees of the shop (one that showed-up one day with a roadkill deer on the back of his moped) and a veterinary student intern named Dixie who gets incredibly grossed-out by dead animals or the idea of having to touch them. I think she needs to rethink her major!

Other than the standard taxidermy that is performed in their little shop north of Little Rock, Xtreme Taxidermy specializes in a very odd form of preservation. They taxidermy pets. And they don't just skin them and put them on mounts like you do your prized deer or moose head. The pets are freeze-dried so that they'll last forever.

I'd already heard of freeze-drying animals, especially in the scientific community where specimens could be preserved. If you had a two-headed pig or a set of conjoined lambs that didn't survive, you could have a scientific group prepare them by freeze-drying so that they could be used in the classroom to explain biological anomalies. Seeing a real, three-dimensional representation is much easier to learn from than a photo in a textbook or just trying to take someone's word for it.

But pets? Yes, there are pet cemeteries all around the United States where people pay a lot of money for their pets to be buried in elaborate caskets with ornate headstones. I have Cody, my previous service dog, buried in the back yard with a plaque over the site. The only reason we buried him is because we couldn't do what we normally do when a pet dies -- have them cremated. No one in our area does that. But in the past when a pet has finally gone to wait at the Rainbow Bridge, we've taken their body to the vet's office to have them cremated and then sprinkled their ashes in places they loved to play or just lay in the sun in the backyard. I had considered getting an urn to keep Cody's ashes if we could have had him cremated, but it just wasn't to be.

I totally understand how people are so attached to their pets. Anyone who tries to brush-away your grieving by saying, "It was just a dog/cat/hamster/rabbit/etc." has no idea how much a part of the family they become. True, I can get another dog/cat/hamster/rabbit/etc., but it's not going to be the same animal and it's still not going to fill the void the recently deceased has left. And don't get me started on those who are trying to clone dead pets....

But freeze-drying a pet? I love my pets and service dogs immensely, but I'm not so sure I'd want to have it staring at me for the rest of time. Or even if you get it done with its eyes closed, it's still going to be there and you can't hug and cuddle it like a live pet. Plus you have to dust it just like any other knick-knack in the house and heaven forbid you have company over and someone's toddler decides to play with it and snaps off a body part. Don't laugh at that -- there was an episode last night where after having a Chihuahua in their freezer for four years a family decided to have it freeze-dried along with another dog that had just recently passed away and their kid kept trying to play with them like dolls. Even Mr. Ross said it would be a miracle if they got home with them intact or if he didn't receive a phone call in the next two months because she'd snapped the head off of it.

Part of my family is from that northern-central/northeastern part of Arkansas. I grew up in the Bootheel of Missouri. We were rednecks and we knew it. When I got a job as a newspaper editor in one of the "hill-country" counties just north of "Southeast Missouri-proper," I knew I was a redneck. They were hillbillies and darned proud of it. They couldn't understand me and vice versa. It was almost a Deliverance-like experience that has shaped (and scarred) my life forever. So when I watched the show, I understood their accents (even the one shop employee whom the network thought needed subtitles to understand), and I understood that hunting wild hogs or picking up a road-kill deer wasn't something considered out of the ordinary. Seeing a young girl coming into their shop to claim her oven-dried hog skull from her first kill didn't faze me a bit. Husband, however, was laughing himself silly because nothing seemed to shock me or appear disturbing in my opinion.

And then the lady with the racoon appeared. I've had friends that have had all sorts of weird pets. And, yes, I've seen the horrible tourist-trap taxidermies that have been done like the lizards that are supposed to be a mariachi band or the snakes posed as if they're going to strike. And, yes, I've even seen the ever-famous jackalopes. But I've never known anyone to keep a racoon as a pet. Those things are mean. Really mean -- as in "eat your neighbor's small dogs or cats" mean. This lady had a 40-pound racoon that she'd raised as a pet that had, sadly, become roadkill. She wanted it mounted so she could always remember it. I guess the large photo album she brought with her wasn't enough.

When Mr. Ross went to the lady's single-wide trailer to deliver the mount, she proudly showed the places where the racoon had chewed through cabinets and left a path of destruction through the home. Of course it did! It's a wild animal! But instead of spending money to repair or replace the damages, she gets the animal stuffed. This is the part of the show where I've got issues.

I don't want to assume bad things about anyone. And I certainly have had my time (and probably will many additional times) where I couldn't really afford to have or do the things I wanted and hard choices had to be made. And when you've grown-up in that environment and in an area where it's very prevalent, you try to remember where your priorities are. Sure, an income tax refund seems like something that needs to be spent immediately -- but I'm not freeze-drying a pet with it!

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I've not been so traumatized by a pet's death that I need to have it's freeze-dried carcass taking up precious floor or shelf space and having it stare at me. I had major surgery once and Youngest Son bought me a toy owl that had huge plastic eyes that I had to turn the thing away from me at night because it looked as if it was staring into my soul. I certainly don't want that from a 40-pound-or-more animal glaring at me. And if it's eyes are closed, then what's the point of "having the pet there" where you can "interact" with it (as many of the customers said)?

I like the fact that the show is family-friendly and probably the harshest word you'll hear would be "darn." But I do have to agree with Mrs. Ross -- you bake hog skulls in my good oven and you're gonna hear about it!