Why does Orlean say you have to have many skills and be a nerd to be into taxidermy but then follow up with how one must be full of love and eccentric as well?
What is the use of the historic background Orlean includes?
Orlean starts out by describing the types of skills one needs to be a taxidermist, "To be good at taxidermy, you have to be good at sewing, sculpting, painting, and hairdressing, and mostly you have to be a little bit of a zoology nerd." She purposely talks about how intelligent and talented those who are involved with taxidermy are but then follows up and almost discredits that. "You have to love animals...Taxidermists seem to make little distinction between loving animals that are alive and loving ones that are not. "I love deer," one of the champions in the whitetail division said to me. "They're my babies." Doing this took the taxidermist from a smart individual to a weirdo who loves stuffed animals.
Looking at it from another perspective Orlean may have done this to show the multiple sides of a taxidermist. One view shows how smart and how much a taxidermist must learn in order to do their job. The other view shows that those involved with taxidermy are very passionate and care about the animals that they work with and that they care about animals in general. Also the history make the reader take taxidermist seriously. It causes the reader to realize that taxidermy has an extensive past and is not just some new fangled hobby that a weirdo came up with.
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