Saturday, February 11, 2006
You OK Bear?

Ruby and I recently went to the new Sportsman’s Warehouse Megastore in search of a windproof jacket. I usually try to move quickly when shopping with Ruby so that neither of us gets bored or cranky.  I was unprepared for her wide-eyed excitement as we strolled past the many stuffed deer, elk, bears, turkeys, lions, and even a scrawny coyote that had been shot and stuffed for the pleasure of the store’s patrons.  My daughter was rigid with joy and wonder, pointing at the once-beautiful creatures, which were now mockingly placed on shelves above backpacks, or nailed to the wall near the ATV accessories and shotgun shells.  “What’s that?” “Hi deer!” “Big Fish!” “Oh Daddy, Wussat?”  I answered her questions and tried not to be saddened by the juxtaposition of joyful young life and senseless repetitive death.

Rudolf was a big part of Ruby’s Christmas this year, and her fascination with deer has outlived her thankfully diminishing demands for me to sing that silly X-mas song.  As we meandered through the fly-fishing equipment and camping stoves, she was most interested in the gazelles, deer, and elk.  She pointed at the store’s behemoth centerpiece of death and said over and over, “Big deer, Big DEER, BIG DEER!” I only said it once,  “That’s a big elk Ruby.  They are even bigger than deer.”  She started a new mantra, “Big Elk Big Elk Big Elk Big Elk.”  After I made my purchase and we left the store, Ruby looked from side to side: bronze statues of a deer and an elk flank the store’s entrance.  Ruby, from that one earlier encounter, now knew that the larger one was “BIG ELK.”  We walked over and she told me where his nose was.  I asked if she wanted to touch it, and of course she said, “OK!”  For weeks afterwards, she would tell everyone who would listen the story of the big elk and how she touched his nose.  She still gets directly in my face and makes sure that I am looking into her eyes before she says “Big Elk?  Touched his nose.  Touched his nose.”  Ani and I returned a couple of times because it made Ruby so happy. 

I remember being very small and walking through the galleries of stuffed animals at the Nevada state museum, but I must have been older than Ruby, because I understood that they were dead and that someone had shot and killed them.  I still was compelled to look at all of them as closely as possible, hoping that they would flinch or suddenly sprint into the painted dioramas they inhabited.  I just knew the huge beetle on the fake plant near the immobilized bald eagle wasn’t cured with formaldehyde and had snuck into the exhibit. 

We took Ruby to the Wilbur D. May museum in the park near our house.  May was a very rich rancher who fancied himself a great-white adventurer type.  Apparently, May felt that in order to appreciate the world, one should travel, hunt, kill, and “immerse” oneself in exotic culture by hiring indigenous people to serve one’s every whim.  He procured much material proof of his worldly travels to show the folks back home how great, white, and adventurous he was. It’s hard to walk through the ranch house museum about his life without cringing. Don’t get me wrong; I am not completely bitter towards Wilbur D. May.  My favorite park in town and the trailhead behind my house are on his old Ranch: both of which were among his gifts to the city. Besides, the museum that documents his escapades and houses his coveted trophies and spoils, as creepy and awful as it is, makes for a surreal afternoon.  It is impossible to be unmoved by the reproduction of May’s living room; everything in it is dead.  Bones, horns, pelts, heads and feet cover every possible bare space. 

Ruby looked down at the bearskin rug and said, “You OK Bear?  You OK?”  Ani had to shake her head and walk away.  “Not really Ruby.  Not Really.”  I don’t know what she thought, but it didn’t dampen the afternoon’s fun.  Last Saturday anyways, the Wilbur D. May Museum was Ruby’s favorite place in the world.  Ever since, every time we drive south from our house, she asks about the tiger.  “Tigah?  See Tigah?”  Maybe next week.