Some stories can only happen in New Orleans:

Celestine West runs Bywater Taxidermy and Gifts in the front room of her house, one block off St. Claude Avenue, right in the thick of things.  The bell on the door tinkles when we come in. 

I’m glad you’re here.  If this story took place anywhere else, you would think I’m making it up.  

It’s uncanny.  These dead animals look alive but they’re frozen in action.  Everyone who comes into the shop can’t help but stare.  Celestine’s work is hypnotic.

Here’s a raccoon on a log eating a fish.  Here are two ibises.  Here’s a parade of squirrels dressed like they’re in a second line parade.  Look through this magnifying glass.  It’s a diorama of brine shrimp in a miniature barber shop!

Celestine West is as much artist as taxidermist.  Her work is in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

The “gifts” part of the shop consists of jewelry made of bones, nutria tooth necklaces, rabbit foot keychains and backscratchers made from dried alligator and chicken feet.  The rest of the shop is dedicated to novelty taxidermy.

Most people don’t want to pay $3000 for a stuffed raccoon, let alone $9500 for six dancing squirrels.  “I had to sew all those little costumes, as well as pose the squirrels,” Celestine says when asked to justify the price.  “That takes time,” she says.  “These aren’t made of plastic.  They’re real.”

When you’re in New Orleans, you know where to stay.  You’re on the right website.

“I don’t deal in roadkill, but I know someone who does,” Celestine says.  “He collects roadkill from highways, the kind run over by tractor-trailer trucks.  The big rigs flatten the animals.  He uses them to make mobiles.”

I guess it’s flat enough.

“He lives in Mobile,” Celestine says.  Neither you nor I are interested in going to Mobile.  Nobody is.