With the partial remains of animals all around me, I'm standing in a dark, tiny workshop. One of my hands cups the neck of a dead pheasant and the other clutches a grapefruit knife. I plunge the knife into the top of the bird's chest bone and a jet of bloody pus shoots out, splattering my arms. Composing myself, I slide the knife from the incision right down the exposed body. The knife glides smoothly through the torso, as if I'm slicing into a block of soft cheese. When I reach the tail, I pull the knife out and look at my hands. They are covered in a fleshy, rancid sludge.
The bird stares vacantly up at me like something out of Hostel, ripped in half, with its innards on display for the world to gag at. I've just been initiated into the strange world of taxidermy...
THE TAXMAN
I'm spending the day with taxidermist Chris Elliott, a man who's spent his past 35 years in this slightly odd trade. Scraping an animal off the road, skinning it, stuffing it then sticking it on a wall does not sound like normal behaviour, but Chris seems like a normal guy, and he has a reasonable explanation for his interest.
'I was fascinated by the animals in the Natural History Museum when I was a kid,' he says. 'I had a lot of artistic flair in college, and when I found out about the sculpting side of taxidermy it seemed like the perfect job for me. People think it's weird because they know nothing about it. It's not weird at all; it's an art.'
Fair enough. Still, as Chris leads me through his house to show me his eerie collection of vacant-eyed animals preserved at the moment of death, the film Psycho pops into my head. The walls are heaving with birds, fish, antelopes, foxes and everything in between, and when I turn back to Chris I half expect him to be in his mother's dress, aiming a knife at my heart. Instead he's busy insisting that taxidermy isn't morbid.
'There's something about restoring animals that gives me a buzz. That snowy owl, for instance, died of a tumour - so to work on it and restore it to a point where it'll outlive us all is exciting.'
I tell him I like his stuffed leopard, and he exclaims, 'They're not stuffed animals! The term "stuffing" is something taxidermists get pretty annoyed by!' Er, sorry... we did not know that. Calming himself, he continues. 'The animals aren't "stuffed" with anything. They are modelled or mounted. I think "stuffing" comes from the 16th century when animal skins were packed out with grass and dried spices to stop them going off - but taxidermy has never involved stuffing.'
Closely inspecting the head of a 'mounted' antelope, I ask Chris what's inside it then. 'Urethane foam,' he says. 'I get a block of it and carve a body to the exact dimensions of the carcass. The skin is then laid over it.'
So, the animals are stuffed, then! With urethane foam! I don't say this out loud, though, as it's clearly a touchy subject, and I have no intention of being mounted today.
ANIMALS ON ICE
We head down to Chris's workshop to do some 'modelling'. It's a cramped little shed with a variety of animals in various stages of the taxidermy process. To the left of me on a worktop lies the carcass of a freshly skinned trout, and on the floor is a bucket with the body of a dead fox slopped in it.
'Most of the stuff I get is roadkill,' he explains. 'Truck drivers bring stuff in for me, and I keep a pair of gloves and a bag in the car, in case I spot anything. The rest have died naturally or are given to me by game dealers. I get the more exotic animals from zoos.'
He freezes the animals, then defrosts each one when it's time to work on it. 'The freezer in the workshop is full of them - look!' He lifts open the giant freezer at the back, and, sure enough, it's packed with dead birds. 'Once I got out a Sara Lee cake and there was a tawny owl stuck to it!'
I ask if he defrosts animals in the microwave. 'Experience tells me it doesn't work...' he says with a haunted look on his face. Then he flashes me a slightly crazed smile and says, 'Right, it's time to cover you in blood and guts!'
SKINNY-DIPPING
I look nervously at the dead pheasant in front of me. I pull on the blue surgical gloves and Chris hands me the knife. Before I start slicing into the bird, Chris shows me the mannequin he's already made of it, a perfect foam replica. Making such models to fit the skin over requires huge skill, as does the skinning I'm about to do. Sadly, I have none.
'You're cutting through the top layer of the epidermis, then slicing through the connective tissue between the outer skin and the body,' Chris explains. 'Because the connective tissue is so lightly attached, you can then work your fingers in and easily bring the body away from the skin.'
After making an incision and slicing the pheasant's breastbone, which is as smooth as cutting into a roast chicken, I work my hands under the skin, pulling it carefully away from the body. It feels like an old sock full of jellybeans. As I'm doing this the innards become more visible, a stench is released and flies start to swarm around the carcass. Nice.
When I've pulled most of the skin away, Chris tells me to sever the knee and shoulder joints. On most animals the entire body is removed, but for birds the legs and skull stay, as birds' skinny legs are hard to replicate and their skulls don't have bone marrow like animals, which weakens over time. Slashing at the knee and shoulder joints I slice into a weird sac, from which loads of maggots erupt out. It is repulsive. 'Don't worry,' Chris says. 'You've just split the food sack - they're seeds!'
Trying not to gag, I return to limb-hacking, scything like a madman till the bird's insides come free. Chris then severs the neck and hands the bird back to me. I'm holding its innards in one hand and its skin in the other! As the pheasant's head slops sidewards, it's like he's peering at his own mangled guts. 'The pheasant looks happier than you!' Chris jokes. I feel like a trainee serial killer.
Chris will freeze the body for 'anatomic reference', in case he's doing a new model for a similarly sized bird. If he doesn't keep a carcass, he either incinerates it or eats it - apparently his dog, Dingo, is the best-fed dog in the world. I daren't ask what it eats, but I don't like the way it's looking at me.
TAN-OREXIC FOX
The next stage in the process is tanning - immersing the animal in a solution called Lutan-F, a chemical solution designed to soften and preserve the skin so it won't rot. The fox in the bucket has been soaking in it for about three weeks, and now it's ready to be pulled over the mannequin.
Chris tells me to drain the skin. I put my hands into the bucket and pull the fox from the slop. I hold the neck with one hand and squeeze my fingers down its body to wring it out. As I run my hands over the fox's head, my little finger gets caught in an eye socket. I fight the urge to use it as a glove puppet and place it flat on the worktop like it's roadkill.
Chris hands me the mannequin of the fox's head. Getting the fox's head to fit on perfectly is a bit of a struggle, as the fur is slimy with tanning solution. When it finally slips into place, it's scary yet comical. I'm half-expecting it to start gossiping about life in the woods.
The next stage is to fit Basil's glass eyes into his head. Chris delicately removes the real eyes from their sockets and measures them. He then grabs a book - it's a catalogue of glass eyes! He looks at rows and rows of freaky animal eyes, finding a match for our foxy friend. He plumps for hazel. Lovely.
FLOGGING DEAD HORSES
The final stages are fitting the rest of the skin around the mannequin and stitching it up along the stomach. It'll then be left to dry for four months and sold to a client for about £500 (or more, if the buyer wants him in a glass case, which Chris decorates himself). His biggest sale was for a leopard, for £5,000; in a good month, he makes £3,000. Not bad for pimping up a bit of roadkill.
As I thank Chris for giving me a glimpse into his world, I have one last question: is it possible to do taxidermy with humans? 'No, I'm pretty sure it's not,' he says. 'Though I was doing a talk once and someone shouted, "Is there anything you really want to stuff?" and I shouted back, "Yeah, the redhead from Girls Aloud!" It certainly shut him up, but whether he realised I meant the other kind of stuffing I don't know...'
I'm not sure either, but I do know that's one ginger addition to Chris's gallery I won't be coming back to see.
For info on Chris Elliott, visit www.taxidermist.uk.com
MORE FEATURES
Bookmark this post with: