GOLDEN HILL, MD. — Contestant No. 1 sashayed down the catwalk, her hair bouncing in blonde curls, and smiled a radiant beauty-queen smile. She picked up a furry dead rodent about the size of a football.
Then she took out a very sharp four-inch blade and stuck the point in just above the animal's tail.
"Then," she said, narrating the incision as sweetly as a Miss America contestant talking about world peace, "you're going to want to take your knife ... "
This was the "talent" portion of the 2008 Miss Outdoors pageant, part of an improbable Eastern Shore festival that combines the worlds of beauty contests and competitive muskrat skinning.
For years here, young women have paraded in glittery evening gowns, and then — on the same stage — skinners in camouflage hats have separated small animals from their pelts.
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