A new, tangled display at the P.C. Museum

The newest display at the Phillips County Museum was a bit of a trick to get into place.

The massive taxidermy piece pits two bull elks against one another, their antlers locked in battle, just the way they were found in seven years ago in the South Phillips County's Larb Hills by Will Carlson.

"This is a great addition to the museum," said Phillips County Museum Board Chairman David Rummel. "But it was a community effort to get it up there."

The "up there" Rummel refers to is a good 10-feet in the air, where many of the museum's taxidermy pieces already sit, and the two elk tussling do so on a huge frame decorated with fake rocks and natural-looking grass. The elk were originally found submerged in water and drowned with their antlers locked.

"We had some tourists come through last week and saw it and asked why someone didn't unhook the elk before they drowned," Phillips County Museum Curator Lori Taylor said, adding she didn't want to offend the guest's sanity on such a question and simply told them she didn't know.

Malta's Randy Shores was tasked with trying to figure out how to put the huge display on the narrow bit of real-estate he had to work with and finally decided to build an extension on the existing platform in the museum (adding some very much needed and appreciated storage space below) before driving a machine through garage doors into the museum (no easy feat there either) to lift the display to its new home (Shores also had the help of Shea and Jarrod Williamson during the endeavor.)

"I just wasn't sure how it would all work out," Rummel admitted, "but it looks really nice up there."