Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's that extra in the movie who accidentally
Speaker 1: looked right at the camera twice even though he was
Speaker 1: told specifically not to. Ali Ward back with a new
Speaker 1: episode of an old, old Old Ology. So I have
Speaker 1: had this topic in my sights for years after once
Speaker 1: in my twenties, at midnight in my studio apartment, I
Speaker 1: found myself using a hacksaw to cut into a skull
Speaker 1: over a bathtub. My cousin had found a deer skull
Speaker 1: in a field, and I was trying to mount just
Speaker 1: the antlers. It's no way to do it. But that
Speaker 1: brings us to this week's gorgeous and gory and storied
Speaker 1: art of taxidermy. That's right, so there is an ology
Speaker 1: for that, thrillingly, But first, let's thank the Patreon club
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com slash ologies for making the show
Speaker 1: possible rainershine and sending in their questions. It costs as
Speaker 1: little as twenty five cents an episode to join that,
Speaker 1: And thank you to everyone who's been telling friends about
Speaker 1: the show and who's rated and subscribed, which keeps us
Speaker 1: up in the charts, of course, But the folks that
Speaker 1: leave reviews for me to read on the darker days
Speaker 1: like these fresh ones. Elni Akata said that they made
Speaker 1: it through the entire back catalog. Congratulations in CHRISTA two
Speaker 1: of eight says they listened to ninety nine episodes while
Speaker 1: sewing fabric face masks. Okay, nasology, We're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: So this is a real ology, and it means the
Speaker 1: science of stuffing animals for display. It's also called taxidermy.
Speaker 1: And I looked hither and thither and thither, and y'all,
Speaker 1: I could not find the etymology of this one. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it it comes from nass Latin for nose, or
Speaker 1: from the Germanic nass for wet. So perhaps it's the
Speaker 1: study of wet skin. God only knows. I don't, but
Speaker 1: I have known this nsologist for years, and I visited
Speaker 1: her studio here in La. I have two dead quail
Speaker 1: and my freezer for her. They were sadly window strikes.
Speaker 1: They'll be put to good use. I'm excited to give
Speaker 1: them to her. She is known as an ethical taxidermisk.
Speaker 1: She deals with animals who died of natural causes or
Speaker 1: of reasons not for the sake of stuffing, and she
Speaker 1: runs a business called Prey Taxidermy and they offer classes,
Speaker 1: and she handles just a veritable arc load of animals
Speaker 1: preserved for museum collections and for institutions. And she was
Speaker 1: really beautifully captured in last year's documentary Stuffed, which is gorgeous.
Speaker 1: She's carved a niche as like a badass darling of
Speaker 1: the taxidermy world. She's earned her ranks through just meticulous
Speaker 1: work and these artful mounts and state and world championship titles.
Speaker 1: She also, just side note, looks like a raven haired
Speaker 1: bombshell on like a nineteen fifties movie poster and is
Speaker 1: usually dressed with some kind of vintage flare and perfect eyebrows.
Speaker 1: But she swears like a sailor, and she laughs like
Speaker 1: sunshine and preserves roadkill as a career. She is, in
Speaker 1: a word, everyone's dream woman. So despite the two frozen
Speaker 1: birds taking up precious pizza space in my freezer, we
Speaker 1: alast met up virtually from our houses about a mile apart.
Speaker 1: And this episode is just a glorious mix of nature
Speaker 1: appreciation and real talk and warning you will hear details
Speaker 1: of how a dearly departed specimen goes from like a
Speaker 1: soggy corpse to stunning art and It's no worse than
Speaker 1: what you do when you're preparing chicken for dinner, but
Speaker 1: it will make you appreciate your next stroll through a
Speaker 1: museum not much more. Now. Sharpen your scalpels, fasten your
Speaker 1: aprons for a chat all about following dreams and attention
Speaker 1: to detail, animal conservation, flesh crap, taxidermy, seal blubber, antique, ornithology,
Speaker 1: leaving the tech world for Victorian artistry of your and
Speaker 1: what it's like to date someone who has freezers full
Speaker 1: of dead stuff with globally lauded taxiderby icon and nesologist
Speaker 1: Alice Markham. And so nasology is a term that you'd
Speaker 1: heard of, but people told you it was too old
Speaker 1: to use.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not used a lot.
Speaker 1: I really like it.
Speaker 3: And I heard it before very early in kind of
Speaker 3: researching taxidermy and wanting to, you know, learn this kind
Speaker 3: of did art if you will, and I read about
Speaker 3: the term. It was actually in an old taxidermy textbook
Speaker 3: and there is such a things.
Speaker 1: And then I kind of had asked a few.
Speaker 3: People, mostly like commercial taxidermists, and at the little taxidermy
Speaker 3: school I went to in Montana, and they were.
Speaker 1: Like, where did you hear that?
Speaker 3: No one says that anymore, and so, yeah, it just
Speaker 3: kind of got lost a little bit to the ages.
Speaker 1: But I think I think it should have a come back.
Speaker 4: Ah yay.
Speaker 1: And how did you end up going to taxidermy school
Speaker 1: in Montana? Like? Were you the kind of kid that
Speaker 1: was finding dead stuff in ravines or were you like
Speaker 1: an indoor kid?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Me and my sister joked that when we grew up,
Speaker 3: we had one toy and it was called outside Go.
Speaker 1: That's what we had.
Speaker 3: We you know, So I grew up in Indiana and
Speaker 3: also Florida, and we just had nothing but the great outdoors.
Speaker 3: And we really, me and my sister, we always liked bugs.
Speaker 2: And I was always fascinated by animals.
Speaker 3: And I was always finding animal bones or bits of
Speaker 3: skin or you know whatever it is fur and was
Speaker 3: always so fascinated by it. And so I really grew
Speaker 3: up with a lifelong love of nature and also science.
Speaker 2: I really loved science growing up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I ended up going to school a little bit
Speaker 3: for anthropology, got into marketing, had this whole other career
Speaker 3: where I worked for Disney. I was the director of
Speaker 3: Social Media Strategy and then I just kind of lost
Speaker 3: my marbles and I did, I really did. It was
Speaker 3: not a good work environment for me. It was what
Speaker 3: I fell into. But you know, it's funny. I had
Speaker 3: been collecting taxidermy and collecting all of these little natural
Speaker 3: history you know, creating my cabinet of curiosities, which is
Speaker 3: so so much. I have so much in common with
Speaker 3: my taxid army students.
Speaker 1: Alice says that she was always an outdoor kid, romping
Speaker 1: through fields and searching for bones and dead things in
Speaker 1: the wilds of our Indian upbringing. But when did the
Speaker 1: taxidermy bug first ender her life? Like when did you
Speaker 1: really get that first butterfly?
Speaker 3: You know? I remember when I first moved to New York,
Speaker 3: so I still live in New York. I moved there
Speaker 3: at like eighteen years old for college, and I went
Speaker 3: to the Natural History Museum and so the American Museum
Speaker 3: of Natural History, and it just it was like I
Speaker 3: was in church, but like a church I was like
Speaker 3: excited for and.
Speaker 2: On board for.
Speaker 3: It was just like everything was like mahogany and quiet,
Speaker 3: and then you look up in these amazing dioramas and
Speaker 3: I had just never seen anything like that. I'd grown
Speaker 3: up around tax at Ermie. You know, it was a thing,
Speaker 3: but not like this. When I moved to New York,
Speaker 3: I knew one person there, and I moved there in
Speaker 3: the summer, and so I spent the entire summer learning
Speaker 3: that place like.
Speaker 1: The back of my hand.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know anyone in New York, but I
Speaker 3: knew that museum, and I would take people on little
Speaker 3: impromptu tours, like I would just kidnap like tourists, and
Speaker 3: I did this. I was like weird kid, and I
Speaker 3: just I knew that museum. And then when I moved
Speaker 3: to LA a number of years later, I fell in
Speaker 3: love with our museum here and the dioramas here, and
Speaker 3: I just always wanted to work in museums. And so finally,
Speaker 3: you know, when I lost my marbles at Disney, I
Speaker 3: asked myself, if I could do anything, what would it be.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I want to work in museums.
Speaker 3: And I want to think I want to be a
Speaker 3: tax at rmist. And I just and then I was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm just gonna do it. It was
Speaker 3: just this wild hair that I got, and every day
Speaker 3: I wake up with that same wild hair and go
Speaker 3: to work. I wonder if anyone does classes. I wonder
Speaker 3: if I could learn this anywhere. And so I found
Speaker 3: this little school in Montana. We were only four students
Speaker 3: and I just did like a short two week program.
Speaker 1: So this was the Advanced Taxidermy Training Center in Thompson Falls,
Speaker 1: about one hundred miles northwest of Missoula. And I just
Speaker 1: looked it up on a map and I realized that
Speaker 1: my two thousand and nine Ward family reunion was only
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes away. And now I'm helopist and I
Speaker 1: didn't know about this place sooner, and it was.
Speaker 2: Enough to get me started.
Speaker 3: It was more geared towards what we call commercial tax
Speaker 3: at ermie. You know, doing you know your white tail, deer,
Speaker 3: your you know, your skunk, your whatever. It is like
Speaker 3: things like this, which is considered it's also called trophy work.
Speaker 3: And that was not exactly what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: I really wanted to do museum tax at ermie.
Speaker 1: So I got back.
Speaker 3: Down to LA and UH kind of stalked Timbovard, who's
Speaker 3: the museum tax at rmist at the Natural History Museum
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles. And I mean, I seriously, like I
Speaker 3: figured out like his email address, and like, you know,
Speaker 3: I really stalked him and got him to agree to
Speaker 3: meet with me, then got him to agree to let
Speaker 3: me volunteer, and then I just showed up like every day.
Speaker 3: And I think at some level he was too embarrassed
Speaker 3: like not to hire me.
Speaker 1: So and tell me a little bit about Tim. I
Speaker 1: understand that he is like the original dude at the
Speaker 1: Natural History Museum. What kinds of things did you learn
Speaker 1: from him? And does taxidermy have like a lot of apprenticeships?
Speaker 1: Is that how it's kind of passed down?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so taxidermy is one of those things where it
Speaker 3: is very old school and you do end up hopefully
Speaker 3: in an apprentice mentor situation. Definitely to this day, like
Speaker 3: he'll always be my mentor you know, I call him
Speaker 3: my taxidermy dad. I will literally call his house and
Speaker 3: his wife goes, Tim, your daughter's on the phone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's just he First off, he's the most amazing, kind, curious, patient,
Speaker 3: just lovely person you'll ever meet.
Speaker 1: I want to put.
Speaker 3: Him in his own little diorama and keep him from lists.
Speaker 3: But he's wonderful. And so what it really is with
Speaker 3: learning is that in taxi or I mean we're preserving animals,
Speaker 3: and that's like saying we are painting pictures. There are
Speaker 3: so many different ways to do this, this art slash,
Speaker 3: this science. So you're learning first the way that your
Speaker 3: mentor wants to you to learn it. You know the ways,
Speaker 3: and then they'll kind of, in my experience, Tim really
Speaker 3: widen the scope. He's like, Okay, this is the four
Speaker 3: hundred year old technique for doing birds.
Speaker 2: We're going to use wrapped bodies.
Speaker 3: We're going to you know, just put clay and here
Speaker 3: are the eyes whatever.
Speaker 1: And from those wrapped bodies that you might see in
Speaker 1: collection drawers, she moved on to carving body shapes and
Speaker 1: casting heads and just up and up the ranks of
Speaker 1: difficulty and artistry, learning from the masters as she went.
Speaker 3: I have gone and trained with other taxidermists. So I've
Speaker 3: gone down to Texas and worked with Danny Owens. I've
Speaker 3: gone up to Canada and worked with Ken Walker. I've
Speaker 3: gone to Europe and learned from you know, people like
Speaker 3: Peter Sonson and Jack Fishwick.
Speaker 1: I'm sure these are all names you all know.
Speaker 3: Right. It's really funny because they're really famous in taxidermy land.
Speaker 3: But then you kind of take all these techniques that
Speaker 3: you've learned from different people, and you do what works
Speaker 3: for you. So I have tax at ermy students, and
Speaker 3: I always tell them the only wrong way to do
Speaker 3: it is to say, there's only one way.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel, and walk me through basic taxidermy,
Speaker 1: because I think that a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: you take the skin of an animal, you stuff it
Speaker 1: with newspaper, and then you sew it back up on
Speaker 1: the bottom. And I have a feeling that that is
Speaker 1: not what happens.
Speaker 2: Oh, that hurts my soul to hear that, because I
Speaker 2: know it's true.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's so true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they either think what you just said, or they
Speaker 3: think I'm like an undertaker or a mortician and I
Speaker 3: use like fermaldehyde and crazy chemicals, and neither one of
Speaker 3: those things are true.
Speaker 1: But basic taxater me is this.
Speaker 3: You start with prep aka deconstruction. So I will have
Speaker 3: an animal and let's say it's a mammal, and it
Speaker 3: comes to me dead, and it comes to me generally speaking,
Speaker 3: frozen and bagged.
Speaker 1: I have visited her studio and she has so many
Speaker 1: frasers just filled with the gills with bags containing frosty birds, beavers, foxes,
Speaker 1: dead raccoons. I saw an heirloom swan preserved on ice
Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy six. She's probably got a word hoog.
Speaker 1: They're still born tiger cubs and more, just waiting in
Speaker 1: the chili wings until it's their time to shine in
Speaker 1: the glow of her preservation techniques.
Speaker 3: And so I have my frozen animal, and I will
Speaker 3: let it thaw out a little bit. I still like
Speaker 3: to keep it cold, right, we like to be like
Speaker 3: a butcher shop. The colder you have the meat, the
Speaker 3: less it's going to break down on you. And I'll
Speaker 3: take a whole bunch of measurements, you know, I will
Speaker 3: take you know, I to nose, measurement length of the tail,
Speaker 3: length of each limb, each individual joint to joint.
Speaker 2: We have all these crazy measurement sheets.
Speaker 3: I take photos, you know, getting myself as much reference
Speaker 3: as I can on this animal.
Speaker 2: And then we're going to remove the skin.
Speaker 3: So I've heard this described before by other taxi, I miss,
Speaker 3: I'm going to borrow it. Imagine you're skinning an orange,
Speaker 3: so the rind just kind of comes off, and you
Speaker 3: want to try to do that in as few cuts
Speaker 3: as possible, right, so we're kind of skinning it, removing
Speaker 3: that rind, right, and all the nice juicy stuff on
Speaker 3: the inside that pests would just love to eat.
Speaker 1: That's got to go bye bye.
Speaker 3: So I'm not actually going into any of the organs
Speaker 3: anything like that. I'm essentially removing the skin like you
Speaker 3: would take off a hoodie or a onesie, right, And
Speaker 3: so there's a few different incisions you can do, you know,
Speaker 3: as I like to say, there's more than one way
Speaker 3: to skin a cat.
Speaker 1: So that phrase and variations of it, by the bye,
Speaker 1: has been in use since the sixteen hundreds, and some
Speaker 1: think that it originated with the skinning and burning of
Speaker 1: witches and thus they're suspected pets cats. But this led
Speaker 1: me down a real masshole. And I just learned that
Speaker 1: dried and posed dead cats were sometimes hidden in house
Speaker 1: walls as protection from evil spirits. So if you live
Speaker 1: in an old house and have great luck, there might
Speaker 1: be a really old dead cat in your wall. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Alice has to skin to animal and then use what's
Speaker 1: actly called a flesher, which is a motored grinder type
Speaker 1: of gadget that scrapes leftover muscle and membranes from a hide.
Speaker 1: So imagine using like a power tool, but instead of
Speaker 1: sanding down wood, it just flex flesh.
Speaker 3: Off and then the skin itself has to be preserved.
Speaker 3: In the case of a mammal, we're going to turn
Speaker 3: that skin into leather. And that is a process known
Speaker 3: as tanning. And it's not the kind of tanning we
Speaker 3: do on the beaches here in California, but it's a
Speaker 3: chemical process from turning raw skin into leather, and tanning
Speaker 3: for humans goes back. Oh, I don't even want to guess,
Speaker 3: because I never became that anthropologist, but probably ten thousand
Speaker 3: years in fact, you can tan an animal with its
Speaker 3: own brain and yeah, it's called brain tanning. And a
Speaker 3: fun fact of that is every animal has enough brain
Speaker 3: to tan its own skin.
Speaker 1: Oh guess, okay, quick aside. Yes, Egyptians thousands of years
Speaker 1: ago would preserve all kinds of animals, even hippo mummies
Speaker 1: have been found. And also, brain tanning works by boiling
Speaker 1: brains with water and then applying that as a paste
Speaker 1: to the hide. There's like an oily lessethin in the
Speaker 1: brain that moisturizes the collagen in the skin to make
Speaker 1: it pliable and preserved. But there are other methods of
Speaker 1: preserving skin that involve letting it soak in pee or
Speaker 1: in a solution of pigeon droppings. Alice may have a
Speaker 1: flair for vintage aesthetics, but yeah, that's that's not what
Speaker 1: she does.
Speaker 3: The type of tanning I do, it's actually it's really fun.
Speaker 3: You get into organic chemistry with this, but it is
Speaker 3: called immersion tanning. It actually creates an ionic bond, so
Speaker 3: it's yeah, it's really cool. So first it goes the
Speaker 3: skin goes into an acid pickle. And I know it
Speaker 3: sounds really really scary, like, oh my god, you're playing
Speaker 3: with acid. It's really not. I use a formic acid,
Speaker 3: and formic acid I diluted enough that it gets down
Speaker 3: only to two on the pH scale.
Speaker 1: And just to give you an idea of the pH.
Speaker 3: Scale, like seven is neutral, anything above that is alkaline,
Speaker 3: the opposite of acid, and then below seven in order
Speaker 3: to like burn your face off.
Speaker 1: It would be like a negative ten or something like
Speaker 1: that on the pH scale.
Speaker 3: So I could give myself a little bit of a
Speaker 3: chemical burn, but we're pretty safe around the studio.
Speaker 2: With gloves and masks and all of that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it goes in this acid pickle, which is
Speaker 3: essentially a big bucket with some salt and some acid.
Speaker 3: And what the acid does is it's stretches out the
Speaker 3: molecules of the skin. So we're actually changing the skin
Speaker 3: on a molecular level. So it's stretching out that molecule
Speaker 3: and it's making space for a new ion.
Speaker 1: And so after it's been in the.
Speaker 3: Pickle for like a week, two weeks, six months, if
Speaker 3: you're doing a cow then yeah, you pull it out
Speaker 3: and you can then put it in another bucket. Now
Speaker 3: it'll sound sciency, but it just looks like buckets.
Speaker 2: And then we have some salt in there as well.
Speaker 3: We always have salt in the water because salt is hydrophobic,
Speaker 3: and so it's gonna let the skin absorb some of
Speaker 3: the water, but not too much of it. The salt
Speaker 3: is kind of like puts the brakes on the skin
Speaker 3: getting too much moisture.
Speaker 2: And so then what happens is you add.
Speaker 3: The commercial term for it is lutan f and it's
Speaker 3: an actual little ion and it goes into the molecule
Speaker 3: and zep, all of a sudden, it's no longer raw skin.
Speaker 1: It's leather, no way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we make our own leather only it has
Speaker 3: like eyelids and claws and footpads.
Speaker 1: So yeah, wow, and now tanning it also protects it
Speaker 1: against pests and decomposition. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So the first thing it's going to take care
Speaker 3: of is the decomposition. So obviously the raw skin is
Speaker 3: a really unstable you know, the protechines, everything's breaking down
Speaker 3: when you're talking about raw skin. It's also a breeding
Speaker 3: ground for bacteria. Right, You've got moisture, you've got heat, you've.
Speaker 1: Got all of these.
Speaker 3: So it's going to be very attractive to bacteria growth
Speaker 3: and also pests. But when you tan it, just like
Speaker 3: a leather jacket, you know it is it is much
Speaker 3: more stable. It's not breaking down anymore. It's got this
Speaker 3: artificial ion in there has really stabilized that molecule. Now
Speaker 3: one thing I do stress to my clients, which are
Speaker 3: almost completely museums, nature centers, et cetera. You know, moths
Speaker 3: and beetles, which are the common pests that do go
Speaker 3: after taxidermy, they can eat that. They can absolutely eat it,
Speaker 3: especially the little hair follicles going into the fur. So
Speaker 3: by tanning it, we've made it not attractive to pests.
Speaker 3: But just like a sweater, wool sweater hanging in your closet.
Speaker 1: You know, moths can go after that.
Speaker 3: They can certainly go after taxi my in a museum
Speaker 3: or in your home.
Speaker 1: So don't add random dirty stuff from outside to your
Speaker 1: precious collections without doing a little bug management first. And
Speaker 1: if you're gonna diy it, you got to scrape all
Speaker 1: the fat and the flesh off. And while in the
Speaker 1: old timy days they may have stuffed these hides with
Speaker 1: newspaper or horse hair or even Spanish moths, modern day
Speaker 1: tax dermis don't stuff them, yep, But.
Speaker 3: No today what we are doing, we are not stuffing them.
Speaker 3: In fact, in taxidermy world, if you say, oh, you
Speaker 3: stuff animals, that is like the biggest dirty word you
Speaker 3: can say, like.
Speaker 2: We it's nails on a chalkboard to us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, it's sad.
Speaker 3: Though the term, the preferred nomenclature is mount. We mount animals.
Speaker 3: Oh that doesn't sound any better, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: What are is it foam underneath? Because I understand that
Speaker 1: if you say do trophy taxidermy, you can buy certain
Speaker 1: mounts that are like an elk buck and a doe deer.
Speaker 1: So you can buy these kind of pre fab ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much are you using those versus having to sculpt
Speaker 1: those down to fit particular dimensions.
Speaker 3: Yes, so that's exactly right. What's inside is called a
Speaker 3: form or a mannequin. It's basically a sculpture of the
Speaker 3: animal that the skin is going to go over. Now
Speaker 3: it has to fit, hopefully. So there are what we
Speaker 3: call commercial forms, and there are taxidermy catalogs. By the way,
Speaker 3: I highly recommend you go on some of these websites,
Speaker 3: especially if you're into halloween or sculpting or taxidermy, and
Speaker 3: you can actually take the measurements of your animal within reason,
Speaker 3: and you can go on these websites and you can
Speaker 3: look up your animal, you find the pose you want, jumping, sitting,
Speaker 3: laying down, or if it's just a game head or whatever,
Speaker 3: and then you can find a form that might fit
Speaker 3: your specimen. Now, for me, that's not always so helpful.
Speaker 3: For one, I work on things that a lot of
Speaker 3: people do not work on because they are protected by
Speaker 3: the federal government. So I've worked on endangered animals, protected animals.
Speaker 3: You know, I heard in one of a couple of
Speaker 3: your episodes people mentioning the blackfooted ferret. I have worked
Speaker 3: on blackfooted ferrets, and I can tell you there is
Speaker 3: no blackfooted ferret commercial form because there's only seven hundred
Speaker 3: black footed ferrets alive. So for me, I end up
Speaker 3: making a lot of mine custom. And so what that
Speaker 3: looks like is I remember I talked about we do
Speaker 3: all these measurements and photos and all of that. So
Speaker 3: I've got a few different options here. I can take
Speaker 3: my measurements and the carcass of the animal, and I
Speaker 3: can take some foam. You know, it's not quite like styrofoam.
Speaker 3: It's more like insulation foam. It's called polyurethane foam, and
Speaker 3: I can carve the animal. So I can work in
Speaker 3: a subjective way of sculpting, right, and I can start
Speaker 3: carving that. The other thing I can do is I
Speaker 3: can take my carcass and I can make a mold
Speaker 3: of it. So now we get into molding and casting,
Speaker 3: which is one of my very favorite things to do. Now, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is where I'm talking about these advanced skills that
Speaker 3: I got to learn from my mentor and even some
Speaker 3: other people. And so what I'll do is I'll take
Speaker 3: the carcass and I'll freeze it in the position that
Speaker 3: I'm going to want this animal in, and so I
Speaker 3: will I'm going to talk about a specific one.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I did a baby harbor seal and oh so adorable.
Speaker 3: This was for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
Speaker 3: and it's there now in one of the dioramas.
Speaker 1: Okay, side note. I looked the silvery spotted harbor seal
Speaker 1: up on Alice's Instagram and it's just the cutest little
Speaker 1: muffin at once both small and a chunk. And she's
Speaker 1: about to describe the process of preserving it for science.
Speaker 1: And remember it passed away naturally and the museum is
Speaker 1: putting it to use educating people about marine ecology.
Speaker 3: And so I got this baby harbor seal that unfortunately
Speaker 3: did not make it, and so, oh my god, what
Speaker 3: a chubby little cuteness. And so I, you know, skinned
Speaker 3: him out. Did that whole process was tanning the skin.
Speaker 3: And while that's all going on, I have this baby
Speaker 3: harbor seal without skin on it. So I kind of
Speaker 3: put him in the basic position that I knew the
Speaker 3: museum and their mammalogist wanted to have this in and
Speaker 3: so one and I'm like looking up at the viewer
Speaker 3: and so I froze him in that position. And then
Speaker 3: I took fiberglass, and I like, essentially you're like dump
Speaker 3: being a fiberglass resin mixture over the carcass, and so
Speaker 3: that fiberglass sets up and it's nice and hard nice.
Speaker 3: And so then what I did was I took like
Speaker 3: a spiral saw and I cut a you know, cut
Speaker 3: the fiberglass shell so i'd be able to pop it open.
Speaker 3: I removed the carcass of my baby harbor seal, so
Speaker 3: you know, essentially the harbor seal without its skin on it.
Speaker 3: I removed that, and now I have a mold, right,
Speaker 3: so I have all this negative space.
Speaker 1: I have this shell.
Speaker 3: So I've rejoined the shell, added a bottom to it.
Speaker 3: And then I took this foam that I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: It comes in liquid form. There's an A and a
Speaker 3: B and it's it's this expanding foam.
Speaker 2: So you got an AN A B, you.
Speaker 3: Mix it together, you stir it all up, and it
Speaker 3: starts to expand and then it hard and so it's
Speaker 3: really cool stuff to play with, but if you get it.
Speaker 1: In your hair, you get to cut your hair. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: So if you know this has happened to you.
Speaker 3: This happened to one of my assistants, and I was like,
Speaker 3: oh honey, oh sweetness, you're getting a haircut.
Speaker 1: So that is a lesson learned.
Speaker 5: Let's do a makeover.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and so you pour that A and B mixture,
Speaker 3: mix it all up, throw it into your mold, it expands,
Speaker 3: and then you pop out a little replica of that carcass.
Speaker 1: Right, So I had a little replica of what.
Speaker 3: This or you know, same size, exact to scale replica
Speaker 3: of what this baby harbor seal was. Only it's made
Speaker 3: out of this lightweight phone.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. And yeah, you have something that is going
Speaker 1: to custom fit the skin that you're tanning.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the difficulty harbor seals and everything else. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of fat I had to remove off of
Speaker 3: that skin, right, Like I said, this was a little
Speaker 3: chubby cuteness, so all of the fat goes with the skin.
Speaker 3: So now I've got a very skinny version of what
Speaker 3: that baby harbor seal was. So then I went back
Speaker 3: to my measurements. This is where we get into math,
Speaker 3: which I actually really love. So I measured what I
Speaker 3: have on the foam, So like, let's just they have
Speaker 3: these little rolls back behind their neck, these little fat roles,
Speaker 3: especially when they look up. So I took measurements of,
Speaker 3: you know, the entire circumference going down the body, and
Speaker 3: I was able to say to myself, oh man, I'm
Speaker 3: missing like fifteen millimeters of fat all around here. So
Speaker 3: I ended up adding that back. So I put some
Speaker 3: foam on there. I carved it back down. I started
Speaker 3: putting like foam on it in various places, carving it
Speaker 3: to those measurements, right, and adding all that these little
Speaker 3: fat roles. So I had to look up on my computer, right,
Speaker 3: I go on like Google images and Flicker, and I've
Speaker 3: found all these images of baby Harbor seals that are alive.
Speaker 3: And if I've got him in this little position where
Speaker 3: he's looking up, where are those fat roles going to be?
Speaker 3: And how many fat roles are there to make him
Speaker 3: look like this little alive chunker that I need him
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 1: So that's what I did. And then are you sculpting
Speaker 1: that on top of that polyurethane cast that you've made exactly?
Speaker 3: So I'm taking more of that A and B polyurethane.
Speaker 3: I'm pouring it on top of there I'm letting it dry,
Speaker 3: and I'm kind of taking files and rasts and I'm
Speaker 3: shaving it into essentially sculpting it into what that shape
Speaker 3: needs to be. So that I gave him those little
Speaker 3: you know, those little fat roles.
Speaker 1: And just all of that back.
Speaker 3: And so from there, once I kind of had this,
Speaker 3: I can always take the skin and I can pull
Speaker 3: it out of those buckets that pickle that I have
Speaker 3: it in, and I can do what's called a test fit.
Speaker 2: Just like you trying on clothes.
Speaker 3: My little baby harbor Seal had to try on his body, yep,
Speaker 3: so I see if it fits and what do I
Speaker 3: think of that? And how does it look? And then
Speaker 3: I needed to do other things too, because that little face.
Speaker 1: Think about it.
Speaker 3: How much fat is in our cheeks if you just
Speaker 3: touch your cheek right now, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little more than before in the bread episode.
Speaker 3: So under your chin, right, even your forehead right, your eyebrows,
Speaker 3: you those little muscles there and some fat. So I
Speaker 3: needed to make sure that he had that. So one
Speaker 3: of the things that I did before I skinned him
Speaker 3: is I took what we call a.
Speaker 1: Death mask, a death mask.
Speaker 3: Casual death masks are essentially a mold of a face
Speaker 3: of a dead animal or in some cases people, I
Speaker 3: think even like there's a death mask of Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3: What I did was I took a mold of the
Speaker 3: face before I did anything. So what I used to
Speaker 3: make that mold is there's a material called alginate. Algenate
Speaker 3: is if you go to the dentist and they make
Speaker 3: a mold of your teeth, it's a very pliable, it's
Speaker 3: non toxic, very soft mold material. And essentially I mixed
Speaker 3: a whole little bucket of alginate and I just dipped
Speaker 3: his face in there. And alginate sets up like we
Speaker 3: call it when it kicks, when it hardens, in like
Speaker 3: ten ten minutes. And so I had his and it
Speaker 3: won't pull any of the hair out generally, So I
Speaker 3: knew I was going to be able to get a
Speaker 3: copy exactly of his face without damaging that skin. So
Speaker 3: I had him in the algan eate ten minutes and
Speaker 3: then I just carefully backed his face out of the
Speaker 3: alginate and then into the algin eight I poured in plaster,
Speaker 3: and then ten minutes later I take out the plaster,
Speaker 3: which is now an exact replica of his face that
Speaker 3: we call a death mask. And so if you and
Speaker 3: it's the cutest thing, and if you go on my
Speaker 3: Instagram and you scroll down, you can actually see this
Speaker 3: entire process.
Speaker 1: So for visuals see instagram dot com slash Alice, where
Speaker 1: she's posted a step by step of this process, including
Speaker 1: casting the seal's face and making a replica out of
Speaker 1: that in polyurethane foam, and then sculpting it down a
Speaker 1: bit to make room for clay additions to kind of
Speaker 1: finesse the expression.
Speaker 3: But I was if you can imagine, now I've made
Speaker 3: that sculpture of the body. I've got all the little
Speaker 3: fatness and everything like that, and now I've got that
Speaker 3: face on there, which is an exact replica, and I
Speaker 3: use the same type of foam to you essentially glue
Speaker 3: all these parts together. And so now I'll put the
Speaker 3: skin on again for another test fit.
Speaker 1: Check it right.
Speaker 3: We're trying on our skin to make sure it's all
Speaker 3: gonna look cute.
Speaker 1: That's a great look for you. And the next thing
Speaker 1: we'll try on is the eyes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this really brings it to life.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious about this.
Speaker 3: So taxidermy eyes are made out of glass or acrylic plastic,
Speaker 3: so they are completely fake. You can't use real eyeballs.
Speaker 3: And there are different taxidermy eye companies. This is what
Speaker 3: they do for a living. They make taxidermy eyes and
Speaker 3: they are really cool. I have so many eyeball drawers
Speaker 3: at my studio I can't even tell you.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And so now how do you get
Speaker 1: the skin to stick onto the form when you're ready? Like?
Speaker 1: Are there seams that we can't see? Yeah? There are?
Speaker 3: So Like I said, whenever you skin something, you're going
Speaker 3: to do it in a way that you're not going.
Speaker 1: To be able to see the stitches.
Speaker 3: So I knew before doing this baby seal what the
Speaker 3: pose was going to be.
Speaker 1: So it was going to.
Speaker 3: Be laying on its belly looking up at the viewer.
Speaker 3: So I made the seam exactly my incisions, exactly where that.
Speaker 2: That was going to be sitting on the ground.
Speaker 3: So I got the eyes, I put them on clay
Speaker 3: with the form, and then I will take a glue
Speaker 3: we call it hide paste, and I put that all
Speaker 3: over the form. So we're going to put a hide
Speaker 3: paste all over our sculpture. It's nice and wet, and
Speaker 3: we're going to take clay, and we put it down
Speaker 3: inside each one of the digits. Yes, seals, sea lions
Speaker 3: all that, and they may look like flippers, but they
Speaker 3: do have individual little digits, and so that is all
Speaker 3: filled with clay.
Speaker 1: It's just like a glove.
Speaker 3: Now we're going to take the skin and we lay
Speaker 3: it over our sculpture. So the head goes on like
Speaker 3: a little hoodie and the rest of it.
Speaker 1: It's just like.
Speaker 3: Putting on a onesie, right, And so that onesie goes
Speaker 3: on and instead of zipping it up, I use that
Speaker 3: it's called fire line.
Speaker 2: I think it's for fishing.
Speaker 3: I've never used it for such, but it's like a monofilament,
Speaker 3: and we sew it up, so it all gets sewn up.
Speaker 3: And so after that you will This is where the
Speaker 3: taxi comes into taxi dermy, because taxi means a range
Speaker 3: or movement, and dermy is dermis. And so I'm yeah, right,
Speaker 3: and so now I'm going to push it down. I'm
Speaker 3: going to push that skin and move it around and
Speaker 3: finagle it to wherever it needs to be. And so
Speaker 3: in the case of this little harbor seal, I had
Speaker 3: to put it in to the little folds, right, These
Speaker 3: little chunker folds and things like that. So you're most
Speaker 3: sculpting the skin where it needs to be from the outside.
Speaker 3: But for a lot of mammals like bobcats, mountain lions, deer,
Speaker 3: you know, Kudo, we end up putting these little liners
Speaker 3: inside the ears so that they won't fold and all
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 1: And now the face.
Speaker 3: This is the hardest part is getting the face right,
Speaker 3: because where do people look when they look at taxidermy.
Speaker 1: They look at the face, They look at the eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now we get to what we call tucking.
Speaker 3: You actually will take the lips and you put on
Speaker 3: your form. You make a slit, and you're gonna end
Speaker 3: up tucking the skin into that slit inside the form.
Speaker 1: So this process, she says, it's called splitting the lips,
Speaker 1: and Alice helps shape them with clay. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like juveiderm but taxidermy, which then makes me wonder if
Speaker 1: the science of getting injectables to look younger should just
Speaker 1: be called a dermy. Anyway, Alice is careful about the
Speaker 1: shape of the mouth, oh, because you have to do
Speaker 1: these very very subtle movements in the lips to kind
Speaker 1: of show like relaxation or fear. Or delight or or
Speaker 1: like an inquisitive exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: And if we do open mouth, then we have to
Speaker 2: do it to an even.
Speaker 1: More extreme degree.
Speaker 3: If we're doing something open mouth, we never use the
Speaker 3: real teeth, so you have to make an artificial jaw set,
Speaker 3: you know, with teeth and all of that.
Speaker 1: Wait, why did they ditch the teeth?
Speaker 2: The reason we don't use the real teeth is teeth
Speaker 2: are used to being in a moist environment, and if
Speaker 2: we take them out of that environment because it's dead,
Speaker 2: the enamel breaks down and they start to crack and
Speaker 2: fall out.
Speaker 1: So wow know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So just like we make a mold I talked
Speaker 3: about making a death mask, we will then make a
Speaker 3: mold of the teeth and the gums and even the tongues,
Speaker 3: and you can make copies of all of that from
Speaker 3: doing jaw sets for myself, which I'll do with open
Speaker 3: mouthed things like I had to do a little bitty
Speaker 3: island fox for the Santa Barber Natural History Museum, and
Speaker 3: it was like snagging a berry, and you know there's
Speaker 3: island fox are protected, so there's no jaw set for that.
Speaker 3: They're really tiny, and so I made my own using
Speaker 3: dental acrylic and so yeah, and so it's really cute
Speaker 3: all of that, but I had to do it. It's
Speaker 3: super tiny little jaw set, but that way it doesn't break.
Speaker 2: Down over time. Imagine an open.
Speaker 3: Mouthed mountain lion, right, and it's got those those that
Speaker 3: snarl and the nose where the muscles are going to
Speaker 3: pull up.
Speaker 1: Hearing about how much science and sculpture is in her work,
Speaker 1: I realized I totally neglected to ask care about.
Speaker 3: That and the cheeks and the flare of the whiskers,
Speaker 3: all of that.
Speaker 1: You've got to sculpt that with clay.
Speaker 3: From the outside, and you've got to get that lip
Speaker 3: to sit. You know, the lower jaw will be very
Speaker 3: taunt and then the upper lip right is going to
Speaker 3: be pulled up and you have.
Speaker 1: To shape that. And this is a stupid question, but
Speaker 1: was your background in studio art before this? I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to be a really good artist to be
Speaker 1: a taxidermist. How did you get so good at this?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm always learning. I'm always learning. I hope
Speaker 3: I'm good at this, but.
Speaker 1: I yes you are. You've won so many orders. There's
Speaker 1: been like documentaries about you, like you're like one of
Speaker 1: the best taxaurs in the world. Like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: how thank you? How did you get how do you
Speaker 1: develop that skill? And are you really good at pumpkin carving?
Speaker 3: Okay, first off, I'm an amazing pumpkin carver, I know
Speaker 3: first and foremost.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know what.
Speaker 3: I learned this from my mentor Tim Bovard and for
Speaker 3: many many others. So I've been doing this only for
Speaker 3: about ten years now, and I think what's really helped
Speaker 3: me develop is to gain an eye is to not
Speaker 3: make any assumptions. Right, So I don't assume I know
Speaker 3: what a cat looks like.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I go to my measurement sheets, I go to my
Speaker 3: death masks, I go to reference that I'm looking at
Speaker 3: on the computer, and I look at live animals when
Speaker 3: I'm working on something. And I do this every time.
Speaker 3: I'm currently working on a gray fox. I have done
Speaker 3: so many gray foxes, but I always have my reference there,
Speaker 3: not just for that fox, but for looking back at
Speaker 3: reference photos every time, because it becomes a game of telephone.
Speaker 3: If I make an assumption on this gray fox, ten
Speaker 3: gray foxes later, how many have I made an assumption on?
Speaker 2: And how many new assumptions.
Speaker 3: Right, So it then it it doesn't even look like
Speaker 3: a gray fox anymore.
Speaker 1: Maybe it starts to look like my dog. Now, Is
Speaker 1: that why some taxidermy is just bad? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think so. Look, yeah, I think some of it's
Speaker 3: just bad because of time. A lot of the things
Speaker 3: that you see out there, you know, they didn't have
Speaker 3: the kind of tanning that we had. You know, we
Speaker 3: only had this foam since the nineteen seventies. Right, Polyurethane
Speaker 3: wasn't a thing before the nineteen seventies. So they were
Speaker 3: built on burlap and plaster, which takes on moisture and
Speaker 3: they start to break down. But other bad taxidermy I see.
Speaker 3: I see a lot of small birds out there, like
Speaker 3: things like crows or jay's that look like du looks.
Speaker 3: And it's because that taxidermist is a duck taxidermist.
Speaker 1: And I can.
Speaker 3: Tell yeah, I think, you know, And look, I've been
Speaker 3: guilty of this myself.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 3: First of all, there's a lot of taxidermy at the
Speaker 3: La County Natural History Museum that I did early on
Speaker 3: that I need to drag out and burn. Quite frankly,
Speaker 3: I did this. It was a what was it? It
Speaker 3: was a ground squirrel. Thank god it's not on exhibit.
Speaker 3: And you know, most of the squirrels that I have
Speaker 3: seen in my life are fox squirrels, and I'll be
Speaker 3: damned if that ground squirrel does not look exactly like
Speaker 3: a fox squirrel.
Speaker 1: You know, it's got like a big.
Speaker 3: Old pointy head, ear sticking straight up, like, you know,
Speaker 3: the whole thing, whereas ground squirrels are really really different
Speaker 3: from fox squirrels.
Speaker 1: And it's so.
Speaker 3: Funny to look back at that now and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I did that, you know, But I think I, for one,
Speaker 3: I had a mentor that told me the truth about
Speaker 3: it in a very kind way, and I yeah, he
Speaker 3: was like really sweet about it. He's like, well, it
Speaker 3: looks like a squirrel. I don't know about to ground squirrel,
Speaker 3: but it's got some squirrel equalities.
Speaker 1: Like that's exactly what he said to me.
Speaker 3: And then over time he was like, yeah, that looks
Speaker 3: like a fox squirrel. You know, he's gotten more blunt
Speaker 3: with me through the years.
Speaker 1: But you know, I.
Speaker 3: Think the thing is that I like to think of
Speaker 3: myself as just just stupid enough. I never think that
Speaker 3: I'm too smart and that I know anything. I like
Speaker 3: to keep myself, not in a self esteem kind of way,
Speaker 3: but in a humility kind of way.
Speaker 2: I'll never get as good as mother Nature.
Speaker 3: I'm chasing that rainbow and I'm never gonna catch it.
Speaker 1: It's my job to.
Speaker 3: Get as close as possible every time, and the only
Speaker 3: way to do that is never trust myself, only trust
Speaker 3: mother Nature.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so smart. Why do we love people screw ups? Well,
Speaker 1: at least they're taxidermy flubs, like, for example, woodland creatures
Speaker 1: with possessed expressions? What is that really? Just bizarre looking
Speaker 1: fox that made the rounds a few years ago? Lord?
Speaker 1: You know what I have?
Speaker 3: I have like eight copies of that book because people,
Speaker 3: I swear to God, if I.
Speaker 2: Get another one, I'm gonna lose my mind.
Speaker 3: People keep giving them to me as presents, and I'm like, why, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't like crap taxidermy. I think it gives us
Speaker 3: all like a bad name. Yeah, because and I have
Speaker 3: to fight that a lot. Quite frankly, when people think
Speaker 3: of taxidermy, they think Norman Bates crap taxidermy.
Speaker 1: That's what I get, right. Is there a taxidermist in
Speaker 1: a movie that you feel like really gets it right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: My docus memory. That documentary stuff is available on many platforms,
Speaker 1: including Amazon Prime, and I just looked it up on
Speaker 1: Rotten Tomatoes one hundred percent. That's some hardcore quality right there,
Speaker 1: my babies. But she's also helped put more fact into fiction.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I did get to do some work for
Speaker 3: Bates Motel. So if you look at Norman Bates's later
Speaker 3: work in the television show, I will say that Norman
Speaker 3: finally got it right, Thank you very much. Those are
Speaker 3: my birds. So there we go.
Speaker 1: Amazing, And he turned into a really good tax at ermist.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's amazing that he had. He had
Speaker 1: a couple decades to to Yeah, perfect his art. What
Speaker 1: about flim flam? What about myths about taxidermy that you
Speaker 1: really want to debunk?
Speaker 3: Okay, myths that I really want to debunk. Again, we
Speaker 3: are not morticians, We are not undertakers. I have a
Speaker 3: very good friend who is an undert and our jobs
Speaker 3: are nothing alike.
Speaker 1: We have spoken about it. What other myths, Oh.
Speaker 3: You know, what is that is that we kill animals
Speaker 3: for taxidermy.
Speaker 1: That is the biggest myth.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you for one, everything in my personal studio,
Speaker 3: just because of like, you know how I am and
Speaker 3: where I live and whatever, and who my clients are.
Speaker 3: Quite frankly everything in my studio. It died in reasons
Speaker 3: unrelated to the taxidermy. So like that the baby harbor seal.
Speaker 3: Someone went on my Instagram is.
Speaker 1: Like how dare you kill this? And whatever? And I
Speaker 1: was like, but no, I didn't club a baby seal.
Speaker 3: So but I take those moments rather than start a
Speaker 3: flame war back for me, it's my job in that
Speaker 3: moment to.
Speaker 1: Educate the public.
Speaker 3: So I was like, hey, just so you know, this
Speaker 3: came from a wildlife rehab. Unfortunately, like he didn't make
Speaker 3: it a lot of times sometimes the mom's will abandon
Speaker 3: them and then you know, I'm happy I can put
Speaker 3: this to good use for education. So yeah, so that's
Speaker 3: the thing. But you know what, even so I will
Speaker 3: say that deer head on someone's wall, somebody ate that,
Speaker 3: are you kidding me? Somebody went out. It might be
Speaker 3: a trophy so that they can remember getting it. But
Speaker 3: that venison is in that person's freezer. It's also in
Speaker 3: their neighbor's freezer, their best friend's freezer. Like I have
Speaker 3: elk in my freezer right now from a friend of
Speaker 3: mine who hunts, and that's wild meat.
Speaker 1: It never lived in a pen. You know.
Speaker 3: It's the truest form of free range. Even with commercial
Speaker 3: tax at army. You know, there's not a lot of
Speaker 3: people out there wasting good meat.
Speaker 1: There's just not Yeah, what about big game like trophy
Speaker 1: hunting like safari parks and things like that. Does that ever?
Speaker 1: Is that a pretty small amount of taxidermy.
Speaker 3: That's a very small amount of taxidermy, big game taxidermist.
Speaker 3: So now we're going to go into some like real
Speaker 3: gray areas, right So, I think people have to kind
Speaker 3: of decide for themselves. For me, I would never want
Speaker 3: to go out and hunt an elephant or a lion
Speaker 3: or a jaguarre or something like that. But in certain
Speaker 3: African countries and just to name some, so like Zimbabwe,
Speaker 3: South Africa, if these animals don't have a value, then
Speaker 3: they are considered worthless. And I'll just speak about South
Speaker 3: Africa for right now. If they are allowing big game
Speaker 3: hunting of let's say, rhino or an elephant generally internationally
Speaker 3: watched or protected species, they're going to let them hunt
Speaker 3: a male or a female that is past breeding age.
Speaker 3: A person is paying you know, sometimes up to a
Speaker 3: quarter of a million dollars or more in order to
Speaker 3: hunt that. Then that money can go towards land that
Speaker 3: that herd can continue to live on. And that's how
Speaker 3: we have people doing anti poaching work and guarding them,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And so to me, I think some of
Speaker 3: that is a necessary evil. But I don't like to
Speaker 3: speak about Africa as a continent. It's individual countries and
Speaker 3: how that money is used and how that hunting is happening.
Speaker 3: There is individual to that place.
Speaker 1: And what about if someone wants to start a tax
Speaker 1: ermy collection, should they look for vintage taxidermy? Should they
Speaker 1: try to find ethically sourced new taxidermy? What's the best
Speaker 1: place to acquire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so with taxiermy, if you want to
Speaker 3: start a collection, look, I've got some vintage taxidermy that
Speaker 3: I I really like and I think it was well
Speaker 3: done and I sometimes just like.
Speaker 1: That vintage look to it.
Speaker 3: What I would say is, first off, make sure what
Speaker 3: you're buying is legal in your country and in your state.
Speaker 3: Do you know in California state it is illegal to
Speaker 3: buy kangaroo or zebra or zebra?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So cool, yep. And as I've recently learned it's
Speaker 1: illegal to own a feather unless you're Alice.
Speaker 3: It is illegal to own any part of the bird,
Speaker 3: including feathers, or their nests or their eggs. Those are
Speaker 3: all protected so and it is federally protected. So in
Speaker 3: order to work on these things, I actually have a
Speaker 3: federal bird permit, and each one of my clients, the
Speaker 3: museums or institutions, if they are going to have me
Speaker 3: do one of these protected birds for them, they have
Speaker 3: to have a permit and have listed on that permit
Speaker 3: each individual bird. So it's, you know, be more paperwork
Speaker 3: than you think. So some of the protected birds, you know, listen.
Speaker 3: So certain things are like, uh, fair game, you can
Speaker 3: totally have them. Pigeons, knock yourself out. Those are feral.
Speaker 3: All pigeons are feral. They used to be wild, they're
Speaker 3: not anymore. And they're non native European starlings. Guess what
Speaker 3: they belong in Europe. Go ahead, knock yourself out. But
Speaker 3: other things like hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are completely federally protected.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else.
Speaker 3: Seagulls, even any type of sea bird federally protected. And
Speaker 3: then you get into weird things like crows. Crows are
Speaker 3: not protected per se, but you cannot legally buy or
Speaker 3: sell a crow.
Speaker 1: Really, I check this out. Yes, it is illegal to take, possess, export, import, transport, sell, purchase,
Speaker 1: or trade any crow or any part of a crow,
Speaker 1: including its feathers or their eggs or nests without a permit.
Speaker 1: But what are we talking like a misdemeanor. Nope, it's pelony.
Speaker 3: Well, for one, these laws were put in place because
Speaker 3: of women wearing different things on their hats, etc. Or
Speaker 3: these things becoming jewelry, especially during the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: So what we want to do is they don't want
Speaker 3: to create a market for these things. So basically, if
Speaker 3: it's pretty and colorful and native to where you live,
Speaker 3: it's probably illegal.
Speaker 1: For you to have any part of it. Don't bother,
Speaker 1: don't touch it.
Speaker 3: And yes, fish and wildlife are going on things like
Speaker 3: Etsy and eBay and they will bust you. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: and the other Honestly, I agree with these laws. I
Speaker 3: sometimes get people emailing me and I explain to them
Speaker 3: that it's illegal and they're like, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: Just on the down low, And I'm like, no, I'm
Speaker 2: not going.
Speaker 3: To commit a felony for you.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: And also these laws were put in place to protect
Speaker 3: our native fauna, and also my fish and wildlife is
Speaker 3: one of my clients, so maybe I'd like to keep
Speaker 3: my job.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the other thing I would say is, if you're
Speaker 3: going to get something vintage, make sure and you're not
Speaker 3: bringing in something with pests on it. You can put
Speaker 3: it in the freezer for seventy two hours. That's always
Speaker 3: a good idea. The other thing you can do is
Speaker 3: put it in a space you're not using, a room
Speaker 3: or a garage and set off a bug bomb. It
Speaker 3: will not leave residue on it and you can bug
Speaker 3: vomb it.
Speaker 7: Oh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who had a moth and a
Speaker 1: terma infestation on her taxtnermy collection. She was heartbroken. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: flim flam that your studio smells, I feel like I
Speaker 1: have been there and it was not smelly at all.
Speaker 1: How do you keep it from stinking?
Speaker 3: My studio smells like tabasco and vanilla scented candles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if your studio smells, I mean, I'll be honest, there's
Speaker 3: no way I don't have the cleanest taxi nermy studio
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 1: I do, But if your studio.
Speaker 3: Smells like you got straight up you've got problems, because
Speaker 3: that means bacteria is growing, and that means it's attractive
Speaker 3: to pests. My job is to work on things many times,
Speaker 3: like I've said, rare endangered things.
Speaker 1: And then they need to go to museums.
Speaker 3: They need to be incredibly clean and not attractive to pests,
Speaker 3: and that means my studio does too, so we bug
Speaker 3: bomb in there fairly regularly. I painted my entire studio
Speaker 3: is white so I can see everything. And I mean
Speaker 3: I am living in a world of spray, bleach and gloves,
Speaker 3: So I mean I am medicated for obsessive compulsive disorder.
Speaker 1: It is very clean, but it makes you so good
Speaker 1: at your job. Yeah it zuz.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, I'll you know, hey, if you I
Speaker 3: want to really do well at a competition, I'll just
Speaker 3: go off my meds, you know.
Speaker 1: And you do do so well at competitions. I always
Speaker 1: am so proud of you whenever I see that you've
Speaker 1: gotten like a new award. Among those awards, the twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen California Champion getting the judges Best in Show, the
Speaker 1: People's Choice Award for the United Taxidermist Association, and was
Speaker 1: recognized in the World Taxidermy Championships as being third in
Speaker 1: the world. She knows her shit and people just love
Speaker 1: her for it. So we will pepper her with patroon
Speaker 1: questions in a minute. But first a word from sponsors
Speaker 1: at the show, who make it possible for us to
Speaker 1: donate to a different charity of the ologists choosing each week,
Speaker 1: and this week Alice chose Conservation Ambassadors dot org in Paserbrobolos, California.
Speaker 1: And Conservation Ambassadors offers permanent loving homes for displaced, abused, abandoned,
Speaker 1: or injured wildlife and exotic animals, and they were also
Speaker 1: featured in the documentary Stuff and Alice says that at
Speaker 1: times like this they could probably really is the money
Speaker 1: to help feed all of their animals. So a donation
Speaker 1: went to Conservation Ambassadors dot org in her name, and
Speaker 1: that was made possible by sponsors of the show, which
Speaker 1: you may hear about now.
Speaker 4: Mom, why did I call it Scottish cheese.
Speaker 1: It's cottage cheese, honey, And I'm not sure the.
Speaker 4: Dogs in other countries speak different languages.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. Well, when we get there, well,
Speaker 1: we've got to fix the car first. But there's someone
Speaker 1: coming to help us.
Speaker 4: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 1: Not Geneva, He's from a Viva. Oh there's a van now.
Speaker 7: For car insurance with breakdown rescue, it takes Ava visit
Speaker 7: Aviva dotta E to say fifteen percent acceptance criteria, terms
Speaker 7: and conditions apply. Minimum premium of three hundred and ten
Speaker 7: year old. Fifteen percent discant applies to new policies bought online.
Speaker 7: See Aviva dot i E for details. Car insurance is
Speaker 7: underwritten by Aviva Insurance Arland DAK Aviva Direct Arlund Limited
Speaker 7: is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 1: Okay your questions? Can I ask you some Patreon questions? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it, yay, Okay. A lot of people Broylyn Stark,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Alvarez, Amjia Doles, Stephanie Berherdes and Kayla Jane all
Speaker 1: want to know if you have a favorite animal to taxidermy.
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, I definitely do. My favorite animal to taxidermy
Speaker 3: is so it's definitely birds. I really really love doing birds,
Speaker 3: and a lot of taxidermists like to work on really
Speaker 3: big stuff.
Speaker 1: They're like, ah, go big.
Speaker 3: Or go home, and I'm like, no, I'm going to
Speaker 3: go small or go home. So my favorite thing to
Speaker 3: work on is humming birds. I yeah, I actually developed
Speaker 3: like my own technique for doing hummingbirds. I got to
Speaker 3: do like I think, I did like thirty of them
Speaker 3: for this exhibit at the Huntington Library, and I did
Speaker 3: two cases of hummingbirds. They were replicas of John Gould's
Speaker 3: hummingbird cases from eighteen fifty one ps.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what those were, and it turned out
Speaker 1: a big deal. So John Gould was a British ornithologist
Speaker 1: and a taxidermist, and in eighteen fifty one he exhibited
Speaker 1: twenty four elaborate cases. Each was over two feet tall,
Speaker 1: made of ebonized wood with this gold trim, and inside
Speaker 1: each one were between five and fifteen hummingbirds in this
Speaker 1: environment of foliage and flowers. And thousands of people came
Speaker 1: to see them at the Zoological Gardens of Regent Park,
Speaker 1: including a guy named Charles Dickens Chuckie Dix, who wrote
Speaker 1: a detailed account that Alice used to recreate the look
Speaker 1: in her two cases.
Speaker 2: I even had a wood carver or carve exactly what
Speaker 2: these cases used to be.
Speaker 3: And then I did all these hummingbirds in them, and
Speaker 3: now they live at the More Lab at Occidental College.
Speaker 1: But the jewel of it, the jewel.
Speaker 3: Of my eye, I got to do two little baby
Speaker 3: hummingbirds being fed by their mom.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, how small are the tools? Are you
Speaker 1: using dental tools for that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I use spinal surgery tools.
Speaker 3: So I work in a fifty five degree room on
Speaker 3: a frozen marble slab, and I keep my tools cold
Speaker 3: in a like an alcohol slush, and I never ever
Speaker 3: touch them with my hands, only the cold metal tools.
Speaker 3: So that's the secret is keeping them really really really cold.
Speaker 3: So and it's fun because the mom is feeding one
Speaker 3: of the babies with her beat going in the mouth,
Speaker 3: and I've got a little wire in there you can't see,
Speaker 3: and that's how the mom is suspended feeding them in
Speaker 3: the little nest.
Speaker 1: So, my god, yes, smart, I went and looked at
Speaker 1: photos of this little Allen's hummingbird feeding two little fluff
Speaker 1: nuggets in a nest. And baby hummingbirds, by the bye,
Speaker 1: can be less than a gram in weight. That's lighter
Speaker 1: than a dime and just about an inch long. So
Speaker 1: that is some intricate work. And if you're wondering if
Speaker 1: you can get a crick in your neck, The answer
Speaker 1: is yes, and in Alice's case, one that required recent surgery.
Speaker 1: But more on that later. First, what about hot gossip.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. Jess Swan wants to know. Are
Speaker 1: there any major controversies in the taxidermy world?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, every day there's a major controversy in
Speaker 3: the taxitor male world. Let me tell you, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: we are a tight knit community. There's not that many
Speaker 3: of us. There's like seven hundred worldwide that talk to
Speaker 3: each other all the time. And the controversees are you know,
Speaker 3: people fighting over like which tanning formula's best, or you know,
Speaker 3: like things like that. So it's really you know, imagine
Speaker 3: the kind of fights that people get into on like
Speaker 3: Wikipedia pages. And now we have this forum on taxidermy
Speaker 3: dot net and then sometimes over on Facebook, and we
Speaker 3: will fight with each other about the like minutest little
Speaker 3: details and it's like you can't tu be your tails,
Speaker 3: you need to skin them out, you know, just like
Speaker 3: shit like that. It's so funny and I love it.
Speaker 3: I never get involved, but I love it.
Speaker 1: I like to watch a lot of people had questions
Speaker 1: about ethical sourcing. I Regray, Jesse Dragon, Rebecca Landry, Nozomi Fakui,
Speaker 1: Ashley herbl Roxhanne Parker, Aaron, Ryan Graham, Tattersaw, Bonnie and
Speaker 1: Donica Heart wanted to know about kind of the ethical
Speaker 1: aspects cruelty free specimens and what do you do if
Speaker 1: you see like an endangered that's taxidermide in like a business.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you know ethically sourcing things, So like what
Speaker 3: are your ethics? You know, are you okay with a
Speaker 3: specimen like my birds? One oh one course is European starlings.
Speaker 3: European starlings are non native to where I live, right
Speaker 3: to the North America, and they are killed by through
Speaker 3: pest control and so they are shot out of the sky.
Speaker 3: They're also really bad for our native birds. So do
Speaker 3: you consider that ethical?
Speaker 1: I do? I think that?
Speaker 3: And also I'm not sending out someone just to kill
Speaker 3: these They are being killed anyway by someone doing pest control,
Speaker 3: and I'm just getting the dead bodies for other people.
Speaker 3: They are fine with ordering rats that would be used
Speaker 3: for snake food, right and working on those, So is
Speaker 3: that ethical? So a taxidermist who is doing foxes for
Speaker 3: the client, their client went out fox hunting. Maybe it
Speaker 3: wasn't necessarily depredation, and that taxidermist is doing it to
Speaker 3: put food on their table. Is that a good ethic
Speaker 3: for you? So think you really have to ask yourself
Speaker 3: what's ethical. And you know, what I think is totally
Speaker 3: fine is to ask the taxidermist where they acquired the specimen.
Speaker 3: That is always fine, and then you can make your decision.
Speaker 3: For me, I just I like to work on things
Speaker 3: that they were in no way killed to be taxidermy.
Speaker 3: So for me, that means depredation is fine. That means
Speaker 3: pest control is fine. That means a a rancher who's
Speaker 3: ranching peacocks for their feathers.
Speaker 1: That do fall out.
Speaker 3: That means that that rancher has to occasionally kill some
Speaker 3: of the males because they get super aggressive. So those
Speaker 3: are the ones I get, and I'm fine with that,
Speaker 3: and I do eat the meat. And is it okay
Speaker 3: if you're going to eat the meat anyway? Right, So
Speaker 3: just you know the other thing I'll say is if
Speaker 3: it's a deer, if it's an elk, straight up, somebody
Speaker 3: ate it, So just don't even worry about it.
Speaker 1: So we address this in the acarology and disease, ecology
Speaker 1: episodes about ticks and lime disease and deer populations. But
Speaker 1: deer populations are swelling in some areas, and hunting kills
Speaker 1: about the same number of deer as would have died
Speaker 1: being hit by cars, but in a more controlled and
Speaker 1: safe and less wasteful way. But obviously, if you're looking
Speaker 1: to get into hunting, do research for your own area
Speaker 1: and see what fish and wildlife agencies and conservationists say
Speaker 1: about specific species. And if you want, always always check
Speaker 1: your crevices, check them. A lot of folks Hollis Ala Taylor,
Speaker 1: Mackenzie and Brown Taylor, Valier, Ira Gray, Kylie Mullen want
Speaker 1: to know what's the hardest animal to preserve.
Speaker 2: The hardest animal to preserve.
Speaker 1: It ones with thick skins, like rhinos or fish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every artist right has something that's difficult for them.
Speaker 3: Some artists are not good at painting people, but they
Speaker 3: can do amazing still lives or something. For a lot
Speaker 3: of tax ermists they would think, like the baby hummingbirds
Speaker 3: would be really hard. But for me, I think the
Speaker 3: hardest thing to preserve would be something really big, like
Speaker 3: I can't pick up a rhino skin, you know, those
Speaker 3: things are usually done in a team. When you're gonna
Speaker 3: do something big, it's like a tax itrmist assemble and
Speaker 3: you bring out whoever you can.
Speaker 1: I try to figure out how much a rhino hide
Speaker 1: would weigh and tanned. One source said one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds, so wet with all the flesh still on,
Speaker 1: it must be like double that, right, like three hundred pounds.
Speaker 3: So big things would be something. But I'll tell you
Speaker 3: what I have had the worst time with. And I
Speaker 3: hate them, and everyone knows I hate them. I hate
Speaker 3: pocket gophers. I hate them so much. Pocket gophers are
Speaker 3: the worst thing ever. First Off, First off, they immediately
Speaker 3: when they die, and I think it has something to
Speaker 3: do with their metabolism, start to rot and they get
Speaker 3: these horrible green bellies.
Speaker 2: They also smell really bad to me.
Speaker 3: I you know, I have dealt with a lot in
Speaker 3: my career, but I think they smell horrible.
Speaker 1: And then you go to skin them and.
Speaker 3: Their body is just shaped like a potato, and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to sculpt a potato, and so.
Speaker 1: I call them potato pocket gophers.
Speaker 3: And then their hair is really short so it falls
Speaker 3: out really easy. So for one, they just start to
Speaker 3: rot on you and all their hair falls out. So
Speaker 3: I swear out of if I do ten of them,
Speaker 3: if I skin ten of them, maybe one of them
Speaker 3: will turn out. So that is the thing I refuse
Speaker 3: to work on. I just hand it to my assistant
Speaker 3: and I'm like, I'm not working on this.
Speaker 1: I hate them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I will outsource that every time.
Speaker 1: So on your ship list. Yeah, And Diane p Nozomi
Speaker 1: efically and Mackenzie and Brown. I wanted to know, can
Speaker 1: you get any pathogens from working on any animals, any
Speaker 1: like diseases or ticks you have to look out for.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not going to get the coronavirus for sure,
Speaker 3: because I'm all alone in my studio which is nothing
Speaker 3: but spray, bleach and gloves. But yeah, you can actually,
Speaker 3: so a lot of the danger with catching things would
Speaker 3: be if they were fresh and not frozen.
Speaker 1: By the way, California.
Speaker 3: State it's illegal to pick up roadkill, so you should
Speaker 3: should always check before you pick up roadkill. It's the
Speaker 3: fleas on things that you can get sick from. You
Speaker 3: can get pneumonic plague, you can get all kinds of things.
Speaker 3: But also, I really worry when I'm working on primates,
Speaker 3: because we can contract a lot of things from primates, right,
Speaker 3: It'll pass to us very easily. So that's a situation
Speaker 3: where it's like masks and double gloves and everything else
Speaker 3: when you're working on primates. When I work on birds,
Speaker 3: I don't worry too much unless there have been cases
Speaker 3: of like the bird flew around, so I do keep
Speaker 3: track of all that as well.
Speaker 1: A lot of mammals.
Speaker 3: I don't worry too much, but I think gloves are
Speaker 3: always a good precaution, right.
Speaker 1: And Matt Johnson, sabinak Keyarti, Julie Bear, Anna Okrasinski, Maddox
Speaker 1: and Paige po first time question asker want to know
Speaker 1: about poses? How you feel about kind of goofy poses?
Speaker 1: And Page asked, what's your opinion on posed or dressed
Speaker 1: tax at Ermy specimens where they look like they're doing
Speaker 1: something specific, like mice playing at tiny banjo or rats
Speaker 1: playing poker or dapper squirrels wearing tiny top hats.
Speaker 8: Oh fancy fancy, Yeah, My thoughts on that are So
Speaker 8: I do tax at Army workshops and I have a
Speaker 8: lot of students who are interested in doing that kind
Speaker 8: of work.
Speaker 3: And again, Taxidermy is an art, just like painting. You
Speaker 3: can paint whatever style you want, right, and you can
Speaker 3: you can do real stuff, really true to life, or
Speaker 3: you can do stuff that's really out there, like a
Speaker 3: Salvador Dolly, and taxidermy is just the same. So it's
Speaker 3: not my cup of tea to make a mouse drinking
Speaker 3: a cup of tea, but I certainly know people where
Speaker 3: that is just their jam. And so my only thing
Speaker 3: with that is, like, whatever you're gonna do, just make
Speaker 3: sure it's preserved really well and not attractive to pests,
Speaker 3: and you know, have a field day.
Speaker 1: Well as long as we're talking anthropomorphics. A truly shocking
Speaker 1: number of people asked Jennifer Thegoolie, Nicholas Cosellis, first time
Speaker 1: question asker, Marissa Holtzman, Tyler Q, Kelly Seaman, Mattie Mayer
Speaker 1: all wanted to know, in Jennifer's words, could do theoretically
Speaker 1: taxidermy a human being. Oh oh, I.
Speaker 3: You know, it's so funny. I get this question more
Speaker 3: than you'd think. And really, yeah, I do. I get
Speaker 3: this one a lot. So yes you could, Yes you could, right,
Speaker 3: we've got skin. But here's the kicker, all right, so
Speaker 3: you know how I talked about the process where you
Speaker 3: turn the skin into leather. Yeah, so the skin itself
Speaker 3: looks like leather. If it's not covered in fur, it's
Speaker 3: gonna look like a handbag. So if I taxidermy you,
Speaker 3: you're gonna look like you spent some days at the beach,
Speaker 3: like one of those ladies from the nineteen seventies who
Speaker 3: put on a lot of Hawaiian tropic and now, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're gonna look like that.
Speaker 2: You're gonna look dry. However, I have thought about this.
Speaker 3: There is an old medical technique that has been used
Speaker 3: in taxidermy. It's called wax infiltration, and you can also
Speaker 3: see it at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: If you look at our chimpanzee group and you look
Speaker 3: at their faces, their ears, and their hands and their feet,
Speaker 3: they actually took them off those parts with all the
Speaker 3: flesh on them and not a lot of hair, and
Speaker 3: they put them in this alcohol solution. And this takes
Speaker 3: like six months to a year and they slowly, slowly,
Speaker 3: slowly start adding like more and more. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to quite explain this right because I haven't done it,
Speaker 3: but you make the solution less water, and more and
Speaker 3: more and more and more alcohol, and then you add
Speaker 3: paraffin wax and you bake it, and the skin is
Speaker 3: so thirsty from being in all the alcohol that it
Speaker 3: sucks up the paraffin wax and it infiltrates the skin
Speaker 3: in the same way that that tanning ion would infiltrate it.
Speaker 3: And it's essentially turning the skin into wax and it's
Speaker 3: got that nice translucent look to it and everything. So
Speaker 3: if I were to taxi ermie a human, I would
Speaker 3: do that and it would take a long time, and
Speaker 3: I would I would need some really big vats and everything.
Speaker 1: But okay, this next one is just one of my
Speaker 1: own curiosities that I could not suppress. But how is
Speaker 1: it to date as a taxidermist.
Speaker 3: I you know what I'm gonna say, I'm newly single,
Speaker 3: and I don't really know because I'm like quarantined.
Speaker 1: I had, well, I've been.
Speaker 2: Kind of quarantine. I had neck surgery this year.
Speaker 3: So if you want to know about taxi army and
Speaker 3: the injuries you can get is you look down a
Speaker 3: lot and you can do a number on your neck.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I've been laid up for a
Speaker 3: little while and Uh, not so much with the dating.
Speaker 3: I am not having a lot of on like online dating.
Speaker 3: Look like nobody matches with me because you have to
Speaker 3: say what you do, and I think people think I'm creepy.
Speaker 1: So you're like gorgeous and the world famous at what
Speaker 1: you do. It's just a matter of like that just
Speaker 1: weeds out the people who you wouldn't want to hang
Speaker 1: with anyway, you know what I mean. But who am
Speaker 1: I going to weed in?
Speaker 3: I mean, look, guys have walked away from me when
Speaker 3: I've told them what I do.
Speaker 1: So well, and they're just they're not our people. I know,
Speaker 1: they're not our people. I think so too. I'm super independent.
Speaker 3: I can like bring home the bacon, I can fry
Speaker 3: it up and then I can mount it as taxidermy.
Speaker 1: So whatever, Oh my god, whoever, Well, any anyone who
Speaker 1: dates you very lucky. I agree, she is love best.
Speaker 1: I have a couple more questions from from listeners who
Speaker 1: are falling in love with you by the moment May
Speaker 1: Meryll Mackenzie and Brown, Sam Moody and Nicole. Who I
Speaker 1: want to know, is there a responsible, respectful way to
Speaker 1: taxidermy a pet and how do you feel about it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know what I think there is I personally, I
Speaker 3: don't really do pet taxidermy. I will do pet bird
Speaker 3: taxidermy because I feel, you know, when I compete, I
Speaker 3: compete with birds. I feel very very very like well
Speaker 3: connected to bird specimens and that I would be the
Speaker 3: person that you know, could do a very good job
Speaker 3: on a pet bird to bring out the personality. So
Speaker 3: I will do that depending on the you know, the
Speaker 3: condition of the bird. Because when our pets die, we
Speaker 3: loved them, we took them to the vet, we did this,
Speaker 3: we did that right. So they're not gonna be a
Speaker 3: freshly dead, you know, blunt force trauma, windows strike kind
Speaker 3: of bird.
Speaker 1: They're they're gonna not look great.
Speaker 3: You know, they were sick or something, and so you
Speaker 3: can't always get a good mount.
Speaker 1: The way I look.
Speaker 3: At taxidermy with pets is this, if you got a
Speaker 3: German shepherd, I can make you a German shepherd. Now,
Speaker 3: if you looked at that German shepherd every day of
Speaker 3: your it's life, and you knew every little nuance, a character,
Speaker 3: every little expression, all of these things, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: just making a sculptural representation of your pet. I don't
Speaker 3: know what it looks like as well as you do,
Speaker 3: I'll do my very best, and quite frankly, I don't
Speaker 3: think I would do that great on someone's German shepherd,
Speaker 3: which is why I don't do pet taxidermy when it
Speaker 3: comes to cat and dogs. Also, the eyes are made
Speaker 3: of glass, it's not going to look the same in
Speaker 3: that way. So but I do know taxidermists who do.
Speaker 3: There's Precious Creature Lauren Cain. She has a very respectful
Speaker 3: pet taxidermy business.
Speaker 2: She's located in Joshua Tree.
Speaker 3: She does a lot of sleeping poses and she also
Speaker 3: does like pet cremation and things like that. So I
Speaker 3: send people to her, and I think she her whole
Speaker 3: business is pet taxidermy. I strongly feel that she is
Speaker 3: a compassionate, respectful person and that this is her calling,
Speaker 3: not mine.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. That's so good to know. So for
Speaker 1: more on this, you can see Precious Creature Taxidermy dot com.
Speaker 1: I just found myself on their site staring at photos
Speaker 1: of people's artfully posed taxidermy chihuahuas and then just glancing
Speaker 1: over grabby and try not to ball. I mean, I
Speaker 1: get it, and also you know it's beautiful work. When
Speaker 1: you find yourself wanting to gently kiss a dead cat
Speaker 1: which dovetails. To Artie Ling's question, can you do at
Speaker 1: home DIY taxidermy if you're really feeling up to it,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feel like that's a no, that's a yes,
Speaker 1: that's totally yes.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My studios at my house. Technically that's at home.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, it's big, and it's industrial and on
Speaker 3: it's totally separate. But you know, most taxidermists have a
Speaker 3: home studio, and in fact, in Europe, most taxidermists are
Speaker 3: what we call hobbyists. They don't do this for a living.
Speaker 3: And some of the best taxidermists in the world, by
Speaker 3: the way, are hobbyist because they'll spend they'll spend a
Speaker 3: month working on one thing which I can't afford to do.
Speaker 3: Commercial taxidermists can't afford to do, and they can really
Speaker 3: dial down into the nuances of this. So if you
Speaker 3: do want to try to do taxidermy on your own
Speaker 3: DIY whatever, highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: I teach workshops and I give I tell everybody the
Speaker 3: supply is that this you can do this at home.
Speaker 2: This is how you get specimens. So just for people
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a few really good guides out there
Speaker 3: for doing it at home. Carl Church, he wrote a
Speaker 3: good bird taxidermy book.
Speaker 1: Okay, not to be a nosey grandma pressuring you to
Speaker 1: have kids for her sake, But when will Alice write
Speaker 1: a book?
Speaker 3: I know, I got to put down the scalpel and
Speaker 3: pick up a keyboard, but that's too hard to do. So,
Speaker 3: but you can find a lot of tutorials on taxidermy
Speaker 3: dot net. On the forum. You can go there and
Speaker 3: there's tutorials. So there's a lot of re sources out there,
Speaker 3: and most things you can get online. You can order
Speaker 3: all the supplies super easy. And if you're looking for specimens,
Speaker 3: I get specimens from pet stores. Look, when you have livestock,
Speaker 3: you get dead stock that bends.
Speaker 1: That is a fact. So there is a pet store.
Speaker 3: I generally pay ten to twenty percent of the live value.
Speaker 3: I have them put everything in bags in the freezer
Speaker 3: for me, and then I go there every couple months
Speaker 3: or so and I get their dead stuff and they're
Speaker 3: happy to get something for it, you know, because it's
Speaker 3: dead anyway.
Speaker 1: And you know what places I've.
Speaker 3: Asked have actually not been that creeped out when I've
Speaker 3: shown up with like oh, hey, here's like my business card,
Speaker 3: or you just talk to them like a normal person
Speaker 3: and like hey, I know this is going to sound
Speaker 3: a little weird, but I'm doing taxitermie and I would
Speaker 3: love to get a specimen.
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing. Stuff from a pet store.
Speaker 3: It's not wild, you don't have to worry about like
Speaker 3: pathogens and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's going to be much safer.
Speaker 3: So I really don't want people running around picking up
Speaker 3: roadkill because it's really not safe to do. It's really
Speaker 3: not legal, and quite frankly, it's mostly not going to
Speaker 3: turn out.
Speaker 1: Stuff that gets hit by a car goes.
Speaker 3: Through a lot of trauma and bacteria starts working and
Speaker 3: all of that.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult to do.
Speaker 3: So you know, or ask somebody who does pest control
Speaker 3: or owns a ranch.
Speaker 1: You never know. Okay, that's so awesome. I had no idea,
Speaker 1: and that actually answers my next question, which was from
Speaker 1: Heather Shaver who wanted to know what do you keep
Speaker 1: in your car trunk in case you come across some
Speaker 1: good roadkill but that's not even up your alley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I have done that before when I was
Speaker 3: working at the museum. The museum has a permit. It's
Speaker 3: called a collection permit, only given to institutions in California.
Speaker 3: So I had a museum badge, and I had a
Speaker 3: pair of gloves few gyo lootic gloves in my car
Speaker 3: at all times for other reasons I'm weird, and some
Speaker 3: trash bags, and I had a bag of sault and
Speaker 3: so we were looking for one of our exhibits, some roadkill,
Speaker 3: and we were looking for feral cats. We didn't want
Speaker 3: to use somebody's potential cat. That's very sad, and so yeah,
Speaker 3: I picked up road cocat and using those items, and
Speaker 3: I was just coming from a brunch, so I had
Speaker 3: like a little sun dress on.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, whoo where uh ma'am?
Speaker 3: The cop comes up and he looks at me and
Speaker 3: his mouth just formed without even any sound, his mouth.
Speaker 9: Just formed the shape of why why. And I was like,
Speaker 9: I know, this looks weird. I work for the Natural
Speaker 9: History Museum. We have a collection permit from the county.
Speaker 9: I'm working on an exhibit right now where we need
Speaker 9: some feral cats, and I'm picking this up. Let me
Speaker 9: get you my museum badge, and so I showed him
Speaker 9: my badge and I was like, you know.
Speaker 1: It's legal.
Speaker 3: He didn't say anything for the longest time, and then
Speaker 3: he finally said, you know, I do this program with kids.
Speaker 1: Do you ever do tours? And so I ended up
Speaker 1: doing a tour. That's amazing, man, you would not arrested.
Speaker 3: Well, I had the permit legally, but if I hadn't,
Speaker 3: I just don't even know what would have happened.
Speaker 1: No, that's quick. Aside. In the Corvid Thanatology episode about
Speaker 1: crow funerals, doctor Kaylee Swift made a really excellent point
Speaker 1: about privilege in science and in field work. And it's
Speaker 1: sadly much easier for some white lady to get away
Speaker 1: with picking up animal corpses then it might be for
Speaker 1: other people of different backgrounds, which is why representation is
Speaker 1: so important, and so is equitable treatment by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: It matters in stem and so does acknowledgment of that privilege.
Speaker 1: So science is forever, and it sucks that it's not fair.
Speaker 1: What else sucks? And no, okay, what about what sucks?
Speaker 1: What is the worst part of being a taxidermist? There
Speaker 1: must be something that sucks. I always ask.
Speaker 3: The worst part. The thing that sucks is it's really solitary.
Speaker 3: I'm a pretty social person and you are typically working
Speaker 3: alone taxidermy is you know, it's a quiet job.
Speaker 1: I like to say, all my.
Speaker 3: Coworkers are dead, so you're surrounded by by eyes, but
Speaker 3: not one of them's alive.
Speaker 1: That's what I do.
Speaker 3: I listen to podcasts audiobooks, things about science. So I just,
Speaker 3: you know, my hands are working and my mind can also.
Speaker 2: Be, you know, kind of feeling like I'm not so alone.
Speaker 1: If you will.
Speaker 3: But that's why we have such a big group of
Speaker 3: taxidermists that are connected online. Some of my very very
Speaker 3: very best friends live then one lives in the UK.
Speaker 3: The other ones these are my best friend. The other
Speaker 3: one lives in Australia. I have friends in South Africa,
Speaker 3: you know, Iowa, New Orleans. We only see each other
Speaker 3: every two years or so and so, but we talk
Speaker 3: on like constantly and so yeah, and you know, because
Speaker 3: we ask each other questions, Hey, what's your trick for
Speaker 3: opening up ears, what's your thing for this, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever it is. So we actually had a really tight
Speaker 3: knit but very spread out community. But yeah, that's what
Speaker 3: sucks is it's solitary. I do have my assistant, Paloma,
Speaker 3: who I call my little dove, and so it's just
Speaker 3: the two of us. But we do bring on more people,
Speaker 3: like when we were doing the Santa Barbara job or
Speaker 3: doing a bunch of stuff, my mentor came and worked
Speaker 3: with us, Dakota Rose from Iowa.
Speaker 1: Like we bring people on for things.
Speaker 3: I even bring on students occasionally, so that's what it's great.
Speaker 3: And I do the classes, and I've been teaching a
Speaker 3: college course at Occidental College, so that's one of the
Speaker 3: ways I get over the suckage.
Speaker 1: You know, her website Pray Taxidermy lists upcoming classes and
Speaker 1: she has on the calendar a two day intensive course
Speaker 1: called Birds one oh one that's on Saturday, May twenty
Speaker 1: third and twenty fourth. But then underneath it, however, in
Speaker 1: big red type, is the note quote on hold due
Speaker 1: to plague. But you're free to join her mailing list
Speaker 1: for updates on when classes rezume. And Okay, this favorites
Speaker 1: question is going to be a two parter since Alice
Speaker 1: is just a font of passion about her work. So first,
Speaker 1: does she have a favorite piece of taxidermy that she
Speaker 1: has ever seen? Do you have a favorite diorama in
Speaker 1: the New York Museum or in the LA Museum. Is
Speaker 1: there one that you always stop at?
Speaker 3: Okay, do have a favorite one? This one I'm going
Speaker 3: to tell you guys a secret. So there is a
Speaker 3: diorama hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
Speaker 3: and it has not been open to the public for
Speaker 3: twenty years. They closed it quote unquote temporarily. But there
Speaker 3: is this diorama in there of these Sumatran tigers and
Speaker 3: it is in this strange like so it's in the jungle,
Speaker 3: and it's.
Speaker 1: This force perspective.
Speaker 3: Just you know, it's like you're kind of looking up
Speaker 3: at this ridge of these two tigers like hiding in there,
Speaker 3: and it is just absolutely gorgeous. It's a marvel of
Speaker 3: force perspective. And I am one of the few people
Speaker 3: that have gotten to see it because it's been closed
Speaker 3: for twenty years. And unfortunately, and I've been talking with
Speaker 3: the museum administration, they're actually talking about getting rid of
Speaker 3: this hall. I know there's a pangolin diorama in there,
Speaker 3: clouded leopard, African painted dogs. Some of them are completely
Speaker 3: in disrepair, but there's a high number of them that
Speaker 3: are really good and really amazing, and it's one of
Speaker 3: four diorama halls in that museum, and so they'd be
Speaker 3: getting rid of essentially twenty five percent of their dioramas.
Speaker 3: And there are so few diorama halls left in the world, right,
Speaker 3: so they got rid of them in the Smithsonian in
Speaker 3: the eighties, like all of this stuff. So I am
Speaker 3: begging the administration of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: I've actually had met a meeting, and I am begging
Speaker 3: them to please not only preserve this hall, but let's
Speaker 3: restore it. There's an opportunity to maybe even do new
Speaker 3: dioramas or you know, whatever it is. But I'm begging
Speaker 3: them to preserve this. And so if you're a member
Speaker 3: of the museum and this strikes a chord with you,
Speaker 3: I do recommend like maybe reaching out to them and
Speaker 3: letting them know that, like you'd really like to see
Speaker 3: Alis Markham's favorite diorama.
Speaker 1: Yes, And of course, final most difficult question and now
Speaker 1: your favorite thing about text Ermy I don't even know
Speaker 1: how how are you going to answer this?
Speaker 3: My favorite thing is what I'm doing now is you know,
Speaker 3: it's is getting to educate people, is my whole thing.
Speaker 3: So the two ways I get to do that is
Speaker 3: number one, I get to create these amazing specimens that
Speaker 3: get people excited about animals, right, that's educating people. And
Speaker 3: then another form of educating people is what I'm doing
Speaker 3: right now with talking to your listeners and talking about
Speaker 3: the thing that I am so very passionate about, this
Speaker 3: dying art, if you will, and really getting people to
Speaker 3: understand this very misunderstood science.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of my favorite thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think you can tell like I can
Speaker 3: go for days on taxidermy.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. You're literally like one
Speaker 1: of the world's best. Man. I gotta get her those
Speaker 1: quail corpses, not just for science, but also because it's
Speaker 1: illegal and I need more room for Mochi.
Speaker 3: I think I have over two thousand specimens in my freezer,
Speaker 3: so I've got a lot to keep me, got a
Speaker 3: lot to keep me busy. That's the great thing, Maya.
Speaker 3: My work was made for the coronavirus. Again, it's completely isolated.
Speaker 3: Everything is sterile.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I'm really making the apocalypse work for me.
Speaker 1: You're doing just fine.
Speaker 3: I got a side of elk in the freezer bottles
Speaker 3: and bottles of ethanol alcohol like this is you know,
Speaker 3: I'm good.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're so ready. This has been absolutely
Speaker 1: such a joy.
Speaker 3: Well, I really appreciate it very much. I'm just so
Speaker 3: excited for this. Like I say, listen, like whenever there's
Speaker 3: a new one.
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's a new ology. Yes, so thank you,
Speaker 1: so ask smart people stupid questions. And you can follow
Speaker 1: Alice's work at Instagram dot com slash Alice. She's also
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Twitter dot com slash Alice Markham. Or you
Speaker 1: can go to Pray Taxidermy dot com to see her work,
Speaker 1: and you can check out the stunning documentary stuff for
Speaker 1: more visuals of her whole world and the taxidermy scene.
Speaker 1: We are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at
Speaker 1: ali Ward with one ol on both and there's bleeped
Speaker 1: episodes for kids, and transcripts are up at aliward dot
Speaker 1: com slash Ologies dash Extras, and there will be links
Speaker 1: to all of this plus the sponsors of the show
Speaker 1: and the charities we supported in the show notes, and
Speaker 1: thank you to Emily White and all the Ologies transcribers
Speaker 1: for making those transcripts available. You're amazing. Ologies merch is
Speaker 1: available at ologiesmerch dot com. And thank you Bonnie Dutch
Speaker 1: and Shinnon Feltis sisters who hosts the comedy podcast You
Speaker 1: Are That for managing all the merch. Thank you Caleb
Speaker 1: Patten for bleeping our episodes, Noel Dilworth for being an
Speaker 1: amazing scheduler, and Aaron Talbert for managing the Olive's Podcasts
Speaker 1: Facebook group. Jarrett Sleeper does assistant editing and has daily
Speaker 1: free workouts on his Instagram at noon Pacific every day.
Speaker 1: And of course for the sharpest scalpel in the box,
Speaker 1: Stephen Ray Morris, lead editor who also hosts the podcast
Speaker 1: The per Cast and see Jurassic Right. Nick Thorburn wrote
Speaker 1: and performed the theme music and is in the band Islands.
Speaker 1: And if you stick around till the end the episode,
Speaker 1: you know I tell you a secret. And this week
Speaker 1: I owe you a bidet update and who boy Howdy
Speaker 1: toilet hoses the truly illuminating experience if you're looking to
Speaker 1: save toilet paper in these wacky times, highly recommend. If
Speaker 1: you've been asking yourself, how can I shower one very
Speaker 1: specific area of my body as many times a day
Speaker 1: as I want? Well, then a bidet is just waiting
Speaker 1: for you. Come on, America, let's make this a not
Speaker 1: weird thing to have hooked up to our toilets? Shall
Speaker 1: we ten out of ten? Any whosl next week? More
Speaker 1: stupid questions, more confessions, more wonder at the world. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being here. I appreciate you more
Speaker 1: than you know. Okay, pur right, packadermatology, hobbiology, crypto zoology, lithology,
Speaker 1: new technology, meteorology, feratology, ethnology, seriology.
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