Morning Sentinel
WATERVILLE: Marden's goes wild
BY AMY CALDER
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 01/09/2009

WATERVILLE -- Anyone seeking exotic entertainment to ward off the winter blues need look no further than Marden's Surplus & Salvage.

The store on Kennedy Memorial Drive is selling an array of stuffed wild animals in the furniture department, tucked between the leather couches and miscellaneous chairs.

There's an Alaska brown bear, standing on its haunches, sharp teeth bared, claws ready for combat, for $4,000 -- marked down from $10,000.

There's a buffalo head with black horns for $249, reduced from $2,499; and a Dall sheep with curly horns for $5,000, regularly $19,000, according to the price tag.

"We have an elk, a coyote, a wildebeest, caribou, a deer -- and there are some exotic ones over there," said Ron Dudley, who has worked at Marden's for 20 years.

He said the store's founder, the late Mickey Marden, never ceased to find unusual things to sell, but there was a limit.

"Mickey's motto was, 'If we have to feed it, we don't need it,'" Dudley said.

Then, motioning to the animals, he said, "They're already pre-fed."

The display caused a stir Thursday afternoon as shoppers stumbled upon the silent creatures while browsing the furniture department. Some reacted with surprise, some with shock.

"This is just too wild!" said Janie DaFonte, a horse breeder from Pittsfield.

DaFonte was on a women's day out with friend Patty Edwards of Burnham. Edwards, 59, said she wished she had worn the polar bear boots she bought a long time ago; she would have fit right in.

"I rescue animals," she said. "I have 35 exotics, eight dogs -- my eight dogs would eat those animals in a minute -- one bunny and the fish died two days ago."

The women chatted and giggled and pointed at the unusual display before floating off to the dish department.

"Marden's is just another day in paradise, you know," Edwards crooned.

Craig Carl of Bingham said he goes to Marden's on a regular basis and never had seen anything like the animals.

"This is something completely new and unique and different," he said. "But that's a homely bear."

Asked if he might buy the $5,000 Dall sheep, he uttered a resounding, "No."

"Somebody's got to have a whole lot more money than I've got," he said. "I'm just killing time. I have to pick somebody up at the doctor's office."

Gary Huntley and Herb Pierce of Augusta looked curiously at the lot.

"This is a new kind of furniture, but I got to tell you, it's going to be little rough," Huntley said. "This is definitely different."

Pierce was captured by the large wildebeest head, with dark eyes staring heaven-ward.

"Look at the eyes on this one," he said. "He was not a happy camper when they shot him."

Ken Quirion of Winslow sat down on a black leather couch opposite the animals and unwrapped a pastry. He watched, as people stopped to stare.

"You got to get Jethro Bodine from 'The Beverly Hillbillies' here," Quirion said, nibbling. "Remember how he and Elly May had all those animals?"

Adam Price of Madison was in disbelief.

"These are imitation, right?" he said.

After Dudley told him that only the white polar bear and cub were fake, Price conceded the display was pretty impressive, albeit unusual.

"You never know what you're going to find here," he said.

Two-year-old Michael Swan III of Waterville literally ran to the animals, with his mother, Christine Rice and father, Michael Swan Jr., in tow.

"He loves to go to L.L. Bean to check out the animals there," his mother said. "That's why he ran right over."

Jamie Doty, an eight-year Marden's employee working the desk, said the animals are a bargain, considering the expense of stuffing one.

"To do it yourself, it's $500 to $600. You come here and pay $200; you save $200 to $300," Doty said.

A wall near the desk was peppered with mounted heads of all sorts of exotic animals, with prices decidedly lower than the full-sized creatures.

"You've got a pronghorn antelope, you got a gazelle, you got a Springbok -- the reindeer isn't real -- a Cape Bushbuck from South Africa, southern Mountain Reedbuck," Dudley said.

He said Marden's got the animals from Country Junction, a business in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Bob and Evelyn Chapman of Albion couldn't believe their eyes when they saw the buffalo, bear and sheep.

"God bless America, they are huge, aren't they?" Bob Chapman said.

Amy Calder -- 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com

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