One of the first excursions I made out of Olympia after Snowpocalypse 2012 was to go to Cabela’s with Sarah Cass. I remember reading my father’s Cabela’s catalog when it arrived monthly in the mail when I was a kid. I was in turn fascinated and disgusted by hunting equipment. When Cabela’s opened a brick and mortar store in nearby Lacey a few years ago, I went once and was appalled. I didn’t have my camera on my then as the visit was somewhat unexpected. This time, I went prepared. As a vegetarian for the past 17+ years, I look at Cabela’s taxidermy displays with the same fascination and disgust I did leafing through their catalog nearly two decades ago. The idea of replicating a fabricated sense of nature and environment in a huge box store strikes me as something decadent, perverse and, hopefully, a fleeting moment in the history of humanity. Ultimately, Cabela’s has built and curated a dead zoo.
