Bud, Jackie and the possum that became a star

A guitar and a taxidermy bench

Bud’s route out of Tallapoosa did not lead straight to a specimen case. He studied biology, served in the Army and entertained troops. His family’s memorial account also remembers a weekly folk-singing television program in Casper, Wyoming, and years teaching biology at Buchanan High School after he returned to Georgia. [2]

His 2019 interview supplies the turn in that journey. Taxidermy work took him to Casper; a guitar audition at KSPR brought a sponsored television program. He recalled promising Jackie they would return to Georgia after he learned the trade. [3]

The author biography for his 2003 Western novel Songan places the couple in Casper in 1957–1958. It also remembers a radio program on WWCC in Bremen. Singing, animal work and storytelling ran through the same life. [7]

The shop they built together

Back in Georgia, Bud recalled working at Dixie Steel and then spending evenings in his own shop. The couple made taxidermy their full-time work in 1972. [3] [2]

The scale could be startling. Tallapoosa’s own account credits their business with mounting a life-size African elephant for Anniston’s natural-history museum, as well as giraffes and rhinoceroses. It also describes another side of the trade: furnishing Western-themed restaurant interiors with saddles, boots and branding irons. [4]

The elephant also appears in a testimonial signed by Anniston museum director Cheryl Bragg and preserved on the shop’s website. She dates the working relationship to the Environments of Africa exhibit in 1976 and describes continuing work on mounts, repairs and conservation. The trade involved caring for older exhibits as well as creating new ones. [6]

StoryCorps gives the work a more personal scale. Bud particularly enjoyed birds; Jackie liked painting fish. The animals were a shared livelihood, with room for individual skill and preferences. The elephant’s eye makes sense in that setting: a small detail could matter very much. [1]

The flood and the freezers

The shop’s survival was not guaranteed. Bud recalled that in 1979, while he and Jackie were away, floodwater reached four feet inside. Nineteen freezers overturned. Jackie’s sister, who worked there, arranged a refrigerated truck. He credited that response with saving the customers’ specimens. [3]

Personal belongings were lost, and reopening took a month, he said. Behind the finished animal mounts were freezers, storage and other people’s property entrusted to the shop. The flood makes that less visible part of their livelihood suddenly clear. [3]

Spencer’s second career

Then came the possum. In the couple’s 2018 StoryCorps account, Bud had found the animal dead beside a road and made a mount. When organizers wanted a possum for a New Year’s Eve celebration, he had one available. The mounted animal eventually took the name Spencer, after Tallapoosa businessman Ralph Spencer. [5]

There is no live animal in this part of the story. The attraction was a preserved possum in a lighted countdown ball. The 2018 NPR report describes a celebration that had grown from a small gathering into a crowd of thousands. That is a dated account of its growth, not an attendance claim for every year. [5]

A taxidermist’s saved specimen had acquired a thoroughly unexpected public life. Visitors wanted pictures with it. A town could recognize itself in a joke and invite everyone else to join in.

More than a countdown

Bud also helped Tallapoosa keep a longer memory. His 2024 obituary identifies him as the founder and longtime board chairman of the West Georgia Museum of Tallapoosa. It records another career that began at nineteen: writing about the outdoors for local newspapers. Western novels followed later. [2]

The municipal museum brings local history into rooms of reconstructed shops, a bank and a barber shop. A horse-drawn buggy and a restored 1923 Ford peddler’s wagon sit within that larger effort to make an earlier working town understandable. [4]

After Bud died in October 2024, Jackie returned to StoryCorps with family. The conversation published the following February remembered sixty-eight years of marriage and a shop still filled with reminders of him. [1] [2] Spencer makes a good entrance to this story. Staying a little longer brings us to the people who built the business, made each other laugh and helped their town remember.

Sources and further reading

Sources reviewed October 29, 2026.

1. StoryCorps: 68 Years of Love and Taxidermy
   Published February 14, 2025; combines the couple’s 2018 conversation with Jackie and Cherry’s later remembrance. Published transcript examined; recollections remain attributed.
2. Miller Funeral Home: Robert “Bud” Jones
   Original funeral-home notice published through Legacy, October 19, 2024. Family memorial account of his work, writing and museum service.
3. University of West Georgia: Bud Jones interview transcript, February 11, 2019
   Michael Camp interview. Transcript PDF pages 12–13 visually inspected for the flood account (37:06–38:55); earlier employment chronology at 28:24–33:28. Retrospective testimony.
4. City of Tallapoosa: Attractions
   Municipal descriptions of the taxidermy business and the separate West Georgia Museum. Consult the city for current visit information.
5. NPR / StoryCorps: Meet the Couple Behind a New Year’s Eve Possum Drop
   Heidi Glenn and Kelly Moffitt, December 28, 2018. Spencer’s origin, name, countdown ball and reported growth of the event.
6. Bud Jones Taxidermy: testimonial signed by Cheryl Bragg, Anniston museum director
   Undated testimonial retained on the business website. Identifies work beginning with the museum’s 1976 Africa exhibit, including the elephant and later conservation. Not an inspected museum contract or invoice.
7. AuthorHouse: Songan, by Bud Jones
   Publisher’s record gives November 19, 2003 publication and an author biography. The biography’s Casper years and Bremen radio work are retrospective claims; no contemporary broadcast schedule was found.