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may have passed out again, but suddenly light flooded the basement, and in a blur I could see the stairs leading up to the doorway. Angie shifted and started to pull me away from the stairs. I think she thought it was the attackers again. But I saw my naked foot and a very distinctive silhouette creep into the open doorway.
    “Oo, my Got! Garv! Yangie! Not lookink!”

Chapter 4

    E ven though there’s a lot of nice domestic wildlife taxidermy around and a healthy market in commercial interior decoration, I can’t deal in top-of-the-line exotics. The dinguses in demand by folks with bushels of money I’m not allowed to sell. Like lions, tigers, polar bears, and over a thousand other species listed in parts 17 and 23 of CFR 50, a rule book written by thirty-six countries through an authority known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). However, this doesn’t necessarily keep me from owning them, provided I submit U.S. Fish and Wildlife form 3-200 and receive approval in the form of a permit. And it doesn’t keep me from renting or “lending” them for commercials or photo shoots. And it doesn’t necessarily keep me from buying and selling them, provided said merchandise is packing a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation form 82-19-21 certifying it was harvested legally before 1974, though taxidermy with “papers” isn’t as common as it should be. And if I want to sell an endangered or protected piece I bought in New York in Maine, I need a comparable permit from the other state. Welcome to the taxidermy paper mill.
    In order to sell endangered animals killed after 1974, even if they were road kill, you basically have to prove it’s being used for educational purposes. I have an easier time acquiring such pieces because I supply schools, museums, and tourist traps that pass for museums. But usually such institutions aren’t real moneymakers and can’t pay what the things are worth—i.e., what the black market would pay or what pieces with “paper” would get on the open market.
    The pelts of some endangered species have considerable value on the black market. Some folks ignore CITES authority and sell ivory, crocodile leather, and exotic pelts permit-free to private collectors. I’ve crossed paths with shadowy types who deal both on the fringes and in the fold of this black market, and they have a compelling incentive for continuing their crimes: money. And not just from pelts and rugs but from animal eviscerae. Asian apothecaries turn all manner of animal vestiges into costly folk medicine, and while some of it’s taken legally from bears by hunters, a lot of it is taken whenever and however. Machine-gunning hibernating bears in their dens is one popular method. Then there’s rhino horn and tiger penis, which are never in season but can be purchased just the same, though usually you’re just being sold very expensive ground arrowroot. Aside from the devastating effect this sleazy activity has on biodiversity, it’s an inexcusably rapacious crime that might just put me and PETA in the same lynch mob.
    The reason Big Bro makes it such a pain to collect endangered and protected species, even those taken before the ban on captive animals, is fairly obvious. A legal market for the stuff would encourage even more poaching, which is already alarmingly common. Now, I’m not sympathetic with those who think nothing of making animals extinct to alleviate lumbago or to sport a nifty wrap at the club social. By the same token, I take a dim view of zoos or “conservation parks”—habitat penitentiaries that amount to animal jail. But I can’t help but commiserate with those who want to collect animals freed by natural death or harvested legally, a dignified end for some of Mother Nature’s most exquisite creations. Taxidermy is the ultimate form of flattery.
    Be that as it may, I was less than disposed to the assault team that ransacked