Taxidermist is a lifelong animal lover

PROVO — "Skip" Skidmore was sawing away on the buttocks of a Styrofoam rhino in the middle of Brigham Young University's life science museum Monday when I found him. He was friendly enough at first, right up to that part where I tell him I'm from the newspaper.

"Oh, I can't talk to you," he said.

Boss's orders, he explained.

Bad press will do that to a man, even one who is naturally affable. In the past week, he'd been portrayed as co-public enemy No. 1, along with big-game hunter Fred Morris. Just like that, a man who had gone through life pretty much anonymously and without making an enemy was the target of editorials and scathing columns and news stories and the Humane Society.

It all began when Morris shot a white rhino for the museum and sent the skin to Skidmore and his museum. Now the two of them were being tried in the court of public opinion.

"I'm not a smart man," said Skidmore. "I say the wrong things. So I can't talk."

But then he couldn't help himself. He'd been misunderstood, and he'd had enough. He stopped work on the rhino and began to talk. He explained his one mistake: He told a reporter that he had "commissioned" Morris to shoot the rhino, which wasn't quite the right verb. It was more casual than that. He and Morris, who are old acquaintances, were visiting one day about some of the animals the museum was hoping to exhibit someday. Morris asked him if he wanted a rhino. He said yes. Morris paid some $30,000 to shoot the animal on a game preserve in South Africa. The carcass was eaten by locals; the skin was sent to BYU.

That's when the controversy started.

It turns out Skidmore, assistant curator and part-time taxidermist for the museum, loves animals. As a kid, he became enthralled with them on a visit to the Smithsonian natural science museum in Washington, D.C.

Some kids collected rocks or stamps. He collected all things animal — antlers, skulls or a squirrel's tail he found in the woods. He read everything he could find about them. A friend of the family trapped a mink and gave the carcass to Skip, who made his first attempt at taxidermy with a needle, thread, cotton and buttons. He was 7.

Skidmore says he personally could never shoot a rhino. He hunts for deer, but hasn't shot one for years. The older he gets, the less hunting appeals to him, he says. "I don't like blood and guts and the smell," says Skidmore, clearly seeing the irony of a taxidermist having such sensibilities.