Gunless ‘Game Hunter’ Sells High-Caliber Trophies

--”Wild game hunter” Pete Rachel poses with an exotic bird on his shoulder and with a hand holding the horn of an enormous rhinoceros head hanging on the wall. But things aren’t what they seem. Rachel didn’t bag that trophy--he made it, out of fiberglass. Rachel was encouraged by his mortician father from the age of 12 to enjoy taxidermy. But he has a soft spot for animals, and his artificial trophies allow him to combine business and pleasure. The “game” animals aren’t cheap. A fake hippo goes for $4,000 and half a life-sized elephant, including eight-foot tusks, costs $6,000; but people are willing to pay, and Rachel’s firm, Wildlife Interiors of Hayward, Calif., is going great guns. Rachel isn’t sure what the appeal is, but he draws the line at some hunting fantasies, such as the time he was creating an elephant. “Some guy wanted to pay me extra if I added the figure of his wife being trampled by the elephant, but I turned him down. Too kinky.”

--A 14-year-old girl who helped entertain President Reagan a week ago became the nation’s youngest heart-lung recipient when surgeons in Pittsburgh implanted the organs of an 11-year-old boy. Elizabeth Burns of Norman, Okla., was in critical condition in intensive care following the operation, Mark Shelton, spokesman for Presbyterian-University Hospital, said. Elizabeth, who plays the violin, was among the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra members who performed for the President when he visited Oklahoma City. The donor was Shanton Simper, 11, of Clarkston, Mich. He died from a ruptured blood vessel in his brain, said Madge Lawson, spokeswoman for St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, Mich.

--Magazine Publisher Malcolm Forbes has forged ahead of the Armory Museum in Moscow as having the world’s biggest collection of the golden, bejeweled Easter eggs made for the czars by Russian-born jeweler Faberge. Forbes paid $1.6 million for a Faberge egg in New York in a sale that ended with the auctioneer’s announcing: “The score now stands at the Kremlin 10, Forbes 11.” Only 54 of the eight-inch-high eggs, each different, were made and several have been lost since the Russian Revolution. Forbes’ latest acquisition has a clock face on the outside and a rooster that crows when the lid is opened. It was presented by Nicholas II to Empress Alexandra in 1900.