Stuffing Beavers

I've come across a lot of strange things while researching for writing projects – cannibals, sleepwalkers, people who fall in love with trees, prostitutes, and macabre Victorian circus freaks.

But I think the world of taxidermy has been the most wonderful and disturbing.

Most of us instinctively find taxidermy quite weird – Wanting your beloved pet skinned and stuffed in order to fool yourself they're still with you is a discomfiting concept.

But the professional world of the taxidermist goes much further and into much more fantastical worlds than that.

In competition taxidermy especially, the practice of creating an imaginary creature from the parts of two or more animals has become popular, combining the parts of many to create something new.

Some create an existent animal which is endangered, and thus not available to kill and stuff - for example they might use a white (or polar) bear and a black bear to produce their approximation of a panda. Or they might utilise the method to revive an extinct animal, like the quagga, a mixture of horse and zebra. Or they might even create an imaginary creature - perhaps using a white horse and a horned animal to create a unicorn.

Some taxidermists use only roadkill, animals that have died of natural causes, donations from veterinarians, or unused animal remains from museums. And fairly or unfairly, it is much easier to find the beauty or humour in these artists' work.

Jason Thomas combined chick and crocodile to make a baby dragon

Fiendish Curiosities

Sarina Brewer created a flying squirrel

Custom Creature

Taking an animal and putting it in a ridiculous pose, or even into clothes, could be taken as the ultimate in disrespect. Like circuses dressing up monkeys and dogs and making them dance.

A white pigeon dyed pale pink in a taffeta gown

A Case of Curiosities

But if the craft is done with some style and mischief it can be fantastic. Executed without style however, and with no sense of camp or humour, it really can leave me cold.

This for example may be taking it a little too far.

The Prize Fight' by Edward Hart b. 1847 – d. 1928

However, as this quotation eloquently expresses ~

"Strive to put your mounted animals in easy natural poses unless you are making a grotesque, in which case go the length."

- A.B. Farnum 1944