Coop, Our New Addition

Here's our new addition: Coop. Most of you know that a Cooper's hawk killed him- or herself against the deck of our house in pursuit of a dove last winter. Even dead, it impressed us as a magnificent animal, so with my Scientific Collector's Permit in hand, I handed the bird over to Gene Schoen, who returned Coop in this animated position yesterday. Gene, who lives near the water south of Detroit, trapped a mouse to add to the action of the scene, and cut the top of a fence post from a nearby railroad, a post that his father said had been standing there since the 1940s. There's real moss growing on it and a fence staple jutting out of the side. We're very pleased with Gene's work, and from him and Ron Holt, our neighbor across the road, we've learned that taxidermy is an art, not just a set of technical skills.

The painter Walton Ford has demonstrated that the moment of expression for Audubon occurred when he pinned the dead bird to the board on which he had drawn a grid. Audubon's painting of the bird could be as accurate as it was because of the grid, but the artist's expression of the animal occurred while he was positioning it, before he painted it. When I teach the Audubon class next semester, Coop and the Walton Ford film will help me emphasize this point.

I will hope that Coop would not have objected.