Taxidermy for Dummies

The other day I was driving in the car with McKaylie and Noah. We were listening to the radio and the DJ was talking about how she saw a stuffed beaver in the back of one of her neighbor's cars. She was talking about a real, mounted beaver, not stuffed as in stuffed animal, stuffed. As soon as I heard McKaylie say, "mom?", I knew we were in for an interesting conversation. This is pretty much how it went:

Mc: "Mom, what does she mean, stuffed?"
Me: Trying to decide quickly whether I could explain taxidermy to her without her thinking it's horrible and creepy and so that she could understand, I only got out a "welllllll"
Mc: "Is it just a stuffed animal?"
Me: I decided to give it a shot, "well, it's not exactly like a stuffed animal, because the beaver is real and a stuffed animal isn't"
Mc: "Then it's alive?"
Me: "No, it's not alive, it was a real beaver, but now it's not alive anymore. Do you remember at Grandpa's house? And he had the deer on his wall? (trying to give her something to relate this to......)
Mc: "Yes"
Me: "Well, it's like that deer. It used to be alive, but after it died, they fixed it's skin and fur and basicallly stuffed it so that it looks like a deer"
Mc: "Does it still have blood in it?"
Me: I knew I didn't want to get into this conversation..................."No, McKaylie, all the blood and stuff from inside the beaver and the deer is gone. It would be like Grandpa's deer."
Mc: "Is it just the beaver's head?"
Me: "No, it's probably the beaver's whole body"
Mc: "But is it alive then?"
Me: "No, McKaylie, it's not alive anymore. Grandpa's deer isn't alive, is it?"
Mc: very exasperated, "NO, it only has it's head, you can't live without your head!"
Me: "That's true, but the beaver still isn't alive even though it still has it's head."
Mc: "I don't get it"
Me: grumble, grumble, giving it one last shot, "It used to be alive and after it died, someone took out all it's blood and insides and fixed it's skin and fur and stuffed it so that it looks like a real beaver again."
Mc: "So, it's like a stuffed animal?"
Me: "In a way, yes"
Mc: "Why didn't you just say that?"
Me: "I don't know"