DIRTY BIRDS

I searched for a song about “dirty birds” prior to writing this and I discovered that there is not only a song by that name, but a dance to go with it!  OH, Atlanta, you slay me.  I got a kick out of the video; there are some hilarious background folk featured throughout.

Anyway, the video and that brief preamble are to serve as a slight buffer between you and the visual content of this post, as it’s a little dirty.  I figured I’ve got enough street cred as a taxidermist to have earned your trust, so I feel OK writing about the less glamorous aspects of this craft that make so many people queasy.  If you cannot stand the site of flesh or bone, then please abort now.  But if you’re feeling brave, take my hand baby birds, I’ll feed your head for a minute.

I had two hunters drop off birds last week.  One was what I  initially identified as a female Bufflehead but upon closer inspection actually turned out to be a female Blue Wing Teal.  The other bird was a white pheasant.

Two gorgeous specimen, although you wouldn’t know that from the insides of them.

Let’s start with the duck.  Ducks are notoriously fatty.  There is an odor to them that tends to hang on for a few weeks even after they’re tanned, dried and mounted.  I have no qualms with the odor, but the fattyness can get quite tiresome.  You see, I don’t yet possess a fleshing wheel, so I have to cut all the fat off by hand.  Being someone who actually finds solace in mundane repetitive tasks, I usually don’t mind this but I’ve been pushing my poor paws to the limit lately and there is a soreness creeping in that only people who work with their hands could begin to understand.

Whining aside, I do like trimming fat.  I marvel at it.  I mean, this is what flavor comes from.  But my first instinct is to recoil in disgust if it gets all over my hands or my face.  Why is it gross to touch this substance that is so completely universal-I have it, you have it, all your dogs and cats have it, trust me they do- and it’s the common denominator of all things delicious?  This fat is the real deal.  It’s not oleo or some bogus hydro corn science project, its bona fide, warmth providing, lifesaving fat. I am getting better at embracing the stuff however; it doesn’t hurt that after handling it I’ve got smooth Palmolive hands for hours, even after scrubbing with soap!

Official degreasing diagram

As you can see from my very official chart above, duck skin is tricky. It’s simple to see where trimming needs to be done, but the actual skin is like a thin film of tissue paper underneath all that fat.  It’s extremely easy to cut too far and make “duck doilies”.  Needless to say, I’ll have quite a bit of sewing to do on this skin before I mount it.

The spoils of duck lipo:

Foster THIS

After that, its into the tanning solution and a quick rinse.  Whenever I pull birds out of the water, I’m just a tad dubious that I’ll be able to turn such a sad looking rag into something as beautiful as its original form, but it always works out.

Onto the pheasant.  As is often the case with game foul, this guy was just riddled with bird shot. Both legs were all but shattered.

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Lots of holes:

B, B, B, B, BULLET HOLES!

It’s not just a matter of holes but picking the shot out of the flesh, since I feed these birds to my animals and I don’t want my little babies choking on lead.  The feathers kind of clump together around the shot, some still with quills in the skin, some buried in the meat.  It’s not unlike pulling weeds:

one...

two...

three...

four...

and PULL!

Here’s one leg.  The bone was totally broken, which can be hazardous for little taxidermist fingers working flesh off of them.  I have the scrapes to prove it.  The other leg was completely obliterated.  This means more work down the line when it comes time to mount, but this all comes with the territory.

Post bath, also looking like a wet rag, albeit one covered in beautiful feathers.

Like I said, I use this meat to feed my cats.  If a hunter just wants a trophy mount and doesn’t care to eat what he catches, I will gladly play vulture and use whatever meat I can for my four-legged brood at home.  Obviously this applies to game and not roadkill.  In this case, I cut off what I could and placed it all in the crock pot with some chicken stock.  A few hours in there and presto!  Warm cozy Sunday dinner was served to my little ones:

And that’s the word, Bird.

Manicures for bears and busted skulls

I skinned two ducks the other day; the guy who shot them really did a number on one in particular.  I originally was going to post some pre-skinning pictures but it occurred to me that it might be a tad too graphic.  Let’s just say that the head was crushed, legs were broken and wings were bent.  Definitely a fixer-upper.

Here’s the skull itself; perhaps you can imagine how distorted it may have looked with the skin on.

I actually don’t mind so much when the head’s a bit smashed; it makes the skull easier to clean as I don’t feel the pressure to be so gentle with all the little nooks and crannies.  Every time I clean a bird skull, I hear my instructor’s voice in the back of my head: “Just attack it.  Attack that skull.”  And that’s what I do.  I get it as clean as possible and have even developed some of my own techniques post-school to achieve maximum spotlessness.  Ducks have a fair amount of brains, (of which extracting is my favorite part of the process) and I’d like to try brain tanning sometimes soon.

After spending two days skinning the chicken and the two ducks (most seasoned taxidermists would have had all three skinned, degreased and mounted in one day, by the way) I couldn’t get my mind out of the dissection zone and everything around me was looking like a specimen.  This happens to me from time to time and it can be difficult to shake.  I look at everyone’s knees and see the tendons I’ve so effortlessly been slicing on birds.  I feel around my throat with my hand and conjure a mental image of a my slit wind pipe, open and exposed right next to my draining jugular.  I pet my cats and think how easily the tail skin slips right off the bones of a mouse.

As grotesque and disturbing as it may sound, please rest assured that I am not about to go all Norman Bates on everyone.  I’m just seeing things very anatomically right now.  Once you become intimate with the sight, smell and touch of the insides of a creature ( a mouse’s delicate and miniature intestines, for example) you don’t look at them the same.   I’m sure Med students must go through this in spades.

Speaking of mice:

These guys/this guy isn’t finished yet; I still need to fix up the faces and add in eyes.  Its kind of a Siamese twin mouse.  I bought these feeder mice (already dead and frozen) from a pet shop; and intend to throw the carcasses into the alley down the way for all the hungry stray cats so they won’t go to waste.

And while all this was going on I was adding coat after coat of polish to my bear paw.  It took some brainstorming to devise a method in which I could paint the nails without the fur getting in the way, but I’m on the right path.

Finger condoms!

My fingers smell like horse shit.

But I skinned and mounted a bear paw today.  They smell because I just took a horse leg out of the freezer to thaw for tomorrow morning.  (horse-platform heels, world. BB style.  Look out.)  The leg was clean but even frozen that sweet smell of BARN just punched me in the face.

Anyway, back to the bear paw-it was really neat to touch a part of a bear when I’ve never even seen one in person.  Feeling the claws; I could easily imagine  it slicing my face to pieces.

As I skinned it, I marveled over how similar the actual anatomy seemed to my own hand.

Working with the bear was also a nice reprieve from the marathon of starlings over the weekend; the skin was thick and tough and very pleasant to work with.  While I enjoy the process of working with birds; I consider it significantly more difficult to mount than a less delicate specimen like mammoth fur paw.

Here it is, fleshed out:

I made a form and mounted the paw, sewed it shut and am now in the process of embellishing git to the desired effect.  I have 5 pieces in two shows coming up very soon; I just have to make the pieces.

Adventures in Home Tanning

Most taxidermist send their hides to a tannery; it makes sense when the skins start piling up and the work looks daunting.  Plus, home tanning takes time and effort.  I figured I only have a couple of green hides though so I’d try it myself.

The process takes about three days, and I diligently checked and stretched my raccoon and deer cape each day at the same time.  The coon skin, being thinner, took less time and I was exceptionally pleased with the final result:

Here he is, drying out in our bathtub.  This situation right here has me convinced that I will have to employ a professional tanner in the future, as my house is tiny and the bathtub meant for people.

Here’s the deer cape drying out the next day.  Unfortunately, I must’ve skinned it after some bacteria had taken up residence, because the fur was coming out in clumps.  I was somewhat beside myself seeing as this was the first deer I’d skinned all by myself and I was really gunning for a A+ hide, so I shoved it in the freezer for me to take out and deal with another time.

At least the raccoon was a success.  I taxied the skin onto the form; it’s in a climbing position with some tight corners.  Sewing was definitely a challenge.  Here’s his face, all pinned and carded up for drying.  This is a piece commissioned to me by my husband and he requested a mischievous sort of creature in the midst of a getaway after a bank heist.  I turned the lip up just a liiiiitle bit to indicate a grin, and the $ bag is almost done and ready to be attached to one of his little paws.

I spent about an hour blow-drying the fur; it seemed to take forever. But he dried very well and is hanging in my studio.  Today I will touch up his face and finish him.  Updates to come.

“Counting the days ’til archery season.”

Today I got to skin a roadkill Coon for extra credit.  I’m starting to think that the grimy skinning is my favorite part of taxidermy.  I’ve been looking forward to this all week, getting some guts on my fingers and cutting loose with a surgical steel blade after all that intense modeling clay precision training.

Here’s Coony’s  busted jaw.  The inside was pretty bad; he bit right through his tongue.

His feet were so soft and fleshy; just like baby feet.

Here are the same feet, inverted.  Raccoons are notoriously fatty; the de-greasing process on their hides is quite time consuming.   The foot on the left has been skinned out, the one on the right still has the paw pads and fat.

I hung him from a meat hook, just like I did with the fox, and here I am at the head part.  I’d just cut the first ear out; it takes a little practice to become intuitive as far as when it’s time to cut for the ears and eyes on these small mammals, especially when there is so much fat on the skin; it can obscure the flesh line. Of course I can’t help but imagine what my own body would look like skinned, especially after marinating myself in good mountain dairy products and meat for almost two months.

Here he is, skinned down to the nose.  Along with all the fat on the hide, the carcass is positively covered with it.

OK, after this I’m done talking about fat.  But here’s what I scraped off  the skin.  I like to bring in the local weeklies from Philly to use at my work station; the massage parlor ads in the back never fail to leave Mr. B fully scandalized.

Today on the radio I heard an old classic by my girl Shania.  For the life of me I can’t understand why country music videos are so awful but here’s another mind-numbingly stupid one.  It’s a shame too because the song is cute and Shania is so boss, y’all.