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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Beauty Queens Skinning Muskrats, Miss Out Doors and only in Maryland... |
| 2008-04-01 |
| Golden Hill, Md. -- Contestant No. 1 sashayed down the catwalk, her hair bouncing in blond curls, and smiled a beauty-queen smile. She picked up a furry dead rodent about the size of a football. Then she took out a very sharp 4-inch blade and stuck the point in just above the animal's tail. "Then," she said, narrating the incision as sweetly as a Miss America contestant talking about world peace, "you're going to want to take your knife ..." This was the "talent" portion of the 2008 Miss Outdoors pageant, part of an improbable Eastern Shore festival that combines the worlds of beauty contests and competitive muskrat skinning. For years here, young women have paraded in glittery evening gowns, and then - on the same stage - skinners in camouflage hats have separated small animals from their pelts. This year, two girls chose to do both. Their story played out less than 60 miles from Washington, in a place where time is slowly eroding a culture built around the Chesapeake Bay's boot-sucking marshes. These teenagers were afraid that, without their participation, both the pageant and the skinning races might decline even further. So they sought to take on a hybrid role, one foot in their world and one in their grandparents'. In one weekend, they would be both modern princesses and old-time, blood-covered 'rat-skinners. "You want to take your knuckles," 17-year-old Samantha Phillips, Contestant No. 1, was saying. One of the pageant judges squinched up her face in shock. "And separate the meat from the hide, just like this." In 2005, when she walked out for the talent portion of the pageant with a muskrat thrown over her shoulder, a man in the audience yelled above the cheers, "I want to marry you!" "Oh my God!" a boy in the audience yelled, at the sight of a woman in perfect makeup with her hand inside a muskrat. Then, from another part of the crowd, an older woman's voice: "She's good." And no folks this isn't an April Fools Day joke. You can see a video of the skinning portion Here |
| Posted by:Icerigger |
| #10 eLarson, Isn't the state motto of Maryland “Womanly words, manly deeds?” |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2008-04-01 22:19 |
| #9 I thought it was the Captain and Toenail. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2008-04-01 20:25 |
| #8 I pronounce a fatwa against this article for making me think of the song "Muskrat Love" by the Captain & Tennille. |
| Posted by: ryuge 2008-04-01 20:03 |
| #7 Maryland, my Maryland... |
| Posted by: eLarson 2008-04-01 18:32 |
| #6 There's no need for any dead naked supermodels hanging by their feet from trees gutted like a deer... Oh yes there is. heh Seems like a waste of a perfectly good naked supermodel to me. |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-04-01 17:22 |
| #5 Oh yes there is. heh |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-04-01 16:43 |
| #4 From the sound of these ladies, I think PETA will just pretend that this event never happened. There's no need for any dead naked supermodels hanging by their feet from trees gutted like a deer... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-04-01 13:53 |
| #3 I'm surprise PETA didn't go ballistic. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-04-01 13:46 |
| #2 Thanks Mike - that give me hope for our future. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2008-04-01 09:15 |
| #1 One of my kids was in a regional science fair last weekend. Across the aisle from where he set up his project, there was a project by a girl. The design of the display board was very, very girly: pastels, all the lettering in "cute" fonts, smiley faces, fluffy bunnies. What was her project, you may ask? She did a series of ballistics tests on broadhead arrow points, to determine which design had the greatest penetrating power and lethality in deer hunting. |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-04-01 08:41 |