A rare New Yorker debut story

In a rare (these days) New Yorker debut, the current issue of the mag publishes a writer who's apparently just starting out, still in MFA mode, Thomas Pierce, with a pretty good story called Shirley Temple Three, the title the name of a prehistoric mammoth that has been somehow cloned and brought back to life - which gives you an idea of the oddity of the story: about a middle-aged Georgia woman, Mawmaw, whose beloved but irresponsible son, Tony (?), is the host of an Atlanta TV show called Back from Extinction (I think that would have been a better title for the story), whose premise is bringing extinct creatures back to life through science - the show itself, despite its scifi aspects, seems to film as a Wild Kingdom or any one of the Animal Planet specials. Weirdly, they're supposed to kill the animals after the show to prevent further reproduction but in this instance, for some reason, the vet who's supposed to euthanize - she's also Tony's girlfriend - won't do it, and Tony stashes the mammoth at Mawmaw's; she cares for it for a period of time, until it sickens and then ... I won't give everything away. The story clearly owes a big debt to the great George Saunders, who has created a whole genre out of weird, futuristic amusement parks and zoo exhibits - though he hasn't touched yet on TV, I don't think. The characters are not, however, as lost and loopy as Saunders's; here, the genetic line goes straight to Southern Gothic, Flannery O'Connor for sure but without the acidity, or maybe the younger Padgett Powell. Pierce's characters are actually pretty sweet, and Mawmaw works very hard to care for this pathetic animal - it's the animal who's displaced, not the characters. Where the story falls a bit short is in that Pierce touches on a number of promising themes that he doesn't adequately develop (I know, it's just a story, but still), notably Mawmaw's religious belief - we get into some Southern satire here, as she calls on her fundamentalist minister for a blessing and some aid - and how she, or the minister, feel about tampering with the origin, and the creation, of species. Also, like far too many stories, in writing workshops around the world and in the New Yorker as well, the ending feels like a deflation - the story is all about the premises and the conditions, the act of imagination required to just come up with the features of this story - and the resolution of events and emotions becomes secondary. A promising work and a promising writer, however.