Fur Flies at Beauty Pageant (But It's Not What You Think)

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Muskrat Queens

Two girls from Dorchester County, Md. participate in a beauty pageant and muskrat skinning competition during the 63rd Annual National Outdoor Show in Golden Hill, Md.

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"I'm a little scared," Phillips said. She was in a locker room at South Dorchester School, a few minutes before the pageant, with curlers in her hair and a dead muskrat in a plastic bag. The animal had been caught in a spring-loaded trap in a nearby marsh that morning. Now, it looked awfully fluffy.

"I did blow-dry it," Phillips said.

The competition started with the dance number, then an onstage interview of each contestant. Then it was time for talent. Phillips changed out of the beige suit she'd worn for the interview and came out in hip waders, a plaid shirt and jeans. Trapper's clothes.

"I'm going to show you how to get a muskrat from his house to yours," she said. The crowd, estimated at more than 700 people, buzzed. The judges recoiled. She set the muskrat down on a sheet of cardboard, cut into its skin, peeled the hide back, and then, after a few cuts around the head, wiggled the pelt free.

"There's the, the fur," she said, "and there's the meat." Screams and applause. The carcass was taken offstage, Phillips went to scrub her hands and the next contestant came out to play Beethoven's "F¿r Elise" on the piano.

Abbott went a more conventional route: She belted out a song by pop-country star and "American Idol" alum Kellie Pickler. When she came offstage, a close family friend was literally leaping for joy in the hallway: "Yougotit, yougotit, yougotit!"

She was right. A few minutes later, the enormous sparkling crown of Miss Outdoors was set on Abbott's head. She had become the queen that she had envied so much as a child.

"It's cool, because everybody gets to look at you," she said afterward. "And all the little girls are like, 'I wanna be like her.' "

And from there, it only got better for her. On Saturday, the day of the skinning championships, Abbott was first introduced to the crowd in her crown and gown. "There's Dakota Abbott," one boy said to another at the back of the school gymnasium. "Hotssss." Then she put on ratty jeans and skinned two muskrats in 1 minute, 42 seconds to win the women's junior world championship. No Miss Outdoors in recent memory had ever won a skinning championship.

Phillips won a trophy in the skinning competition -- unsurprisingly, since she was the only one competing in her beginner's division. And in the pageant the night before, as everybody waited to hear the top finishers, emcee Buddy Foxwell had called her name.

"Your first runner-up, 2008 . . . Samantha Phillips!" he said. She had already won the award for the top talent. "Take a walk, Sam."

Phillips took her turn on the catwalk, waving to the crowd in a glamorous, shimmering black evening gown.

There was still a little muskrat blood under her nails.