Assignment 7

I was wondering what might have motivated Susan Orlean, a journalist to take her time to research and write about taxidermy? Might she have been hired to reveal this business which in my view looks like an underworld trade? Why did she use the words like the stillborn as her writerly choices? In her writing she has used phrases like "zoology nerd", who were her target audience?

I think Orlean wrote the essay for the purposes of showcasing what taxidermy is all about. She went into depth in explaining what taxidermists do and how much the business is worth. Whether or not she was hired by self interest groups to market wildlife and bring to life some of the animals that have been rendered extinct, is something to debate about. For example, the Panda are some of the animals that are either in the verge of extinction, or already extinct.

In my view, I thought Orlean's essay was targeting people who take hunting as a hobby and turning it into a huge business of taxidermy. The exhibition that she attended is a clear testament of these facts that these profession has brought to life other trades such as sculpting, sewing, painting and hair dressing. To me, I call it an underworld trade because I did not know before that there is such a trade such as taxidermy, although I had seen dried animals in the museum and other outdoor stores like the Cabela's, I had no idea how that was done. I therefore commend Orlean for bringing this trade to light. I like wildlife and I think I am one of Orlean's targeted audience. I credit Orlean for her essay of Lifelike because it reminds me that if it were not for the artistic work of taxidermy, I would not have known that dinosaurs and other extinct animals ever existed.