Adios and hola Hector

Meet Hector:

About two months ago I got a frantic call from a woman who spoke very little english but found my info on Yelp after her chihuahua’s sudden death and her subsequent decision to have him preserved.  Pair her muy poqueno English with my very limited Spanish and you get one very stilted conversation.  I was able to text my address to her so she could have it in writing and when she dropped off her little guy she was so upset.  Because of the language barrier, my usual line of questioning in which I feel out the client to suss out if this is really something she wants done (or are they making a grief induced, regrettably rash decision) and tenderly discuss options in regard to poses, all the while trying to provide some comfort- all that went out the window.  Payment options and pricing were sorted out immediately and I acted out several posing options on the floor since I was caught off-guard without any photo examples.

She expressed to me that she wanted Hector in the pose you see above, since that’s how he would sit on the window sill and wait for her to come home from work each day.

Unfortunately she had not one photo of Hector to give me a better idea of his facial expression and sadly, didn’t tell me that he was always smiling with his giant row of teeth exposed.  When she came to pick him up yesterday, although she was pleased with the work and wanted to take a stack of business cards so that she may pass them onto her employers (“white people crazy for their pets” -guilty as charged!) I could tell she was disappointed that Hector wasn’t wearing his trademark grin.  I’m saddened over this but there is nothing I can do at this point.  I never thought to ask, she never thought to tell.  I have to chalk it up to the learning process and in the future keep this feature in mind.

Another feature which is new to me is genitals.  Sure I deal with them every time I skin something but this was the first time I tackled the job of mounting them.  Okay, deep breath, lets shake off our fourth grader giggles right now before I proceed.

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Alright.  So, due to this pose with legs spread and belly exposed, there was no avoiding the genitals. A blank spot would just seem bizarre. So, I mounted my first dog penis and testicles. It was surprisingly easy once I shook off the pervy feelings in my head over handling something I would most likely never touch in any other circumstance.

But that’s something I love about my craft.  It’s a never-ending string of unusual circumstances that keep me out of that mundane trance life can lure you into, which can make some people forget they’re alive.  I have never felt more alive than when I’m dealing with death.

Adios, Hector.  It was great working with you.

Bill Bill

 

A few months back I received an email from a grief-stricken woman whose dog Bill Bill had just passed away.  She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with him, but she just knew part of him, at the very least, should be preserved.  Looking at the photo she sent me, above*, it’s no wonder.  That is hands down the kind of coat a taxidermist (or anyone who appreciates beautiful animals) will just drool over.

Sorry if that sounds crass but I mean it with the utmost respect.  That’s the tricky thing about working with pets; I’m currently in the middle of my sixth custom pet project and in each of these cases I’d never met the deceased beforehand.  I do my best to handle the “drop off” with all the sensitivity I can, but ultimately my taxidermist brain is looking at a specimen.  I’ve never seen this animal animated, living.  When the time comes to decide how to handle the death of my own beloved pet children, I suppose I will truly be able to see both sides.

Until then, however, I instead strive to truly connect with the bereaved human.  It’s a humbling honor when a total stranger comes to me in such a vulnerable and saddened state; as someone who has often wondered exactly where my “nurturing chip” is (I have yet to hear one tick of my phantom biological clock and have never connected with infants- I even found the neediness of my puppy irksome before she grew into a more defined young ladypup) it’s profoundly validating to connect with these other humans in a nurturing fashion, where I really feel like I can use whatever it is within me to help this person heal.

Even as I type these words I think of what people might say- “it’s just pet taxidermy, Beth.  You’re not curing cancer.”  Duh.  I totally know that.  But the feelings my clients have are real and cannot be discounted.  The connections I make with these people can never be taken away, just like the ones they’ve made with their pets.  When it’s all said and done, our connections to each other, places, things, etc, will always exist, and however we choose to hold onto them is our right to pursue.

Bill Bill still had his collar on which always makes things extremely real for me, but it’s not as hard as it was that first time with Elke.  My client decided on a sweet little dreamy dog sleeping pose and it came out exactly as I’d hoped.

The final product is a little bit more petite than the original specimen due to a small but manageable lack of fur.  Bill Bill had been sick before his passing and almost all the fur on his underside had been shaved off.  Also, the poor guy had lost his tail.  Lucky for him, he had a human who cared very much for him.

My client and her daughter came by my new studio today to pick him up, and both were quite pleased.  I’m still at the stage in my confidence level where I get the jitters before a piece gets picked up, hoping my work will be deemed acceptable.  So far no complaints!

Here’s the view from the back.  I cannot express enough how much I enjoyed working with this gorgeous coat.

And gorgeous dog, gorgeous client and family, etc.  Great spirits and charm all around!

It was great working with you Mr. Bill Bill.  Sweet dreams.

 

 

*the photo of Bill Bill I attempted to include in this post is apparently in some format that won’t translate so you’ll have to take my word for it.

“I’ve got a stiff black cock in the freezer for you”

That’s the text message I received from my dear chicken-master pal a couple of months back when his prized black Dutch Serama rooster died.

It’s good to have a sense of humor about these things, and after offering my condolences we set about discussing how he would like his cock mounted. (an interesting sidenote-I am often privately fascinated by different words the same key strokes will produce when texting, such as “good” and “home”.  Throughout the process of working on this mount for my friend, we’d often text each0ther back and forth, checking on progress and such.  Every time I try to text the word cock, I get “anal” instead.  The 4th grader in me fins this extremely humourous.)

Here he is, in all his glory:

*

My friend wanted him mounted in a pose which was entirely new territory to me; back arched, tail up and wings relaxed at the side. Oh, and that chest.  I had no idea their chests actually puffed out so far until meeting some roosters at this guy’s coop and seeing it for myself.  I was instructed to emulate this image, and take creative liberty when I where I felt inspired to do so.

While working on the positioning I found other reference images and videos to study online, and became completely enamoured with this little bird.  Such a proud looking creature, completely indifferent to its petite stature. I imagined the muscle strength it must take to arch one’s back just so to bring the tail feathers all the way up like that, all the while standing with the chest pushed out as far as possible.  I even tried imitating this pose myself, (as I often do in an attempt to understand muscle structure and anatomy with my specimen) and would up contorted into a shape that I’m sure would make any back specialist cringe.

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When the time came to select an environment for this mount, I went through many options but there was one that  couldn’t be ignored, as it had been sitting on a shelf above my desk for months.  The horse hoof!  I’ve been working on my horse hoof platform shoes for almost a year now, and this first hoof I have sitting around was my crash course, so to speak, on fleshing out the actual foot part.  When I paired it with the little cock, the color, angles and gently implied S&M facor all gelled together so perfectly I couldn’t help but squeal a little bit.

I live for moments like this, in my studio when it’s just myself and my little creatures, when some treasure or trinket I’ve been holding onto for years meets its mate.

*

 

 

*photo credit: James Coughlin

That sure went fast.

It seems like just the other day I was paying a solemn visit to a friends’ house to retrieve a recently deceased gosling pet.  While I had initial success mounting Bobby, acquiring the perfect wings took some time.  Patience paid off however, and I was rewarded with a delicious squab which provided the perfect shade and size wings as well as a nutritious and wonderful meal.    After the entire piece was finished drying, I gave him a healthy coat of fairy dust to ensure maximum sparkle while poised atop the tree:

 

 

Merry Christmas!

Only four months until Christmas!

Operation gosling-tree-topper is in full swing and on I’m just about on the home stretch with this project.

Dried and fluffed: that skin had to be one of the softest things I’ve ever felt.  Part of me wished it was mine to use as I wished; I would’ve fashioned a pair of earmuffs out of it.

While drying the skin I was presented with a new fronteir: molting.  I had been completely unaware that birds went through this process until my friend Bailey the Hen-Master enlightened me to this phenomenon.  While skinning the goose I’d noticed some skin peeling off his legs, not unlike a snake, but thought nothing of it.  But when the downy feathers around his neck began falling out en masse while drying, I started to panic. I looked up “goose molting” online and found out that young geese molt for the first time at 8-10 weeks, at which point their flight feathers come in. ( I also learned that geese are one fo the few monogamous species occurring in nature and mate for life.)  Molting occurs annually and is a family experience.  They try and stay close to the water at this time as an escape plan from predators, since they can’t fly.  Reading this, I was reminded of a night, weeks ago, when two friends and I were cutting through a field out in the suburbs to walk to another friend’s house.  There were geese everywhere and it looked like  we’d just missed a giant pillow fight.  Now I understand why.  It’s molting season, and Bobby the goose must have been just entering his first molt when he passed.

I managed to handle the skin very carefully and keep the loss to a minimum.

This was not an easy mount by any means; the skin was extremely delicate and I had to handle it with surgical precision to keep  from losing any more feathers. The underformed wings presented a challenge as well, being completely new territory to me.  Needless to say, once I had him sewn up and carded, my sigh of relief could be heard from blocks away, I’m sure.

I’ve still got more to do, but I’m over the hump and quite pleased about it.