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How Taxidermy Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
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Speaker 1: that would make this, that would make this stuff you
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Speaker 1: should know? Hello, Hey, Chuck, h Hey, what's going on?
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Speaker 1: You know? You know I tossed in turn last night.
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Speaker 1: I'm like, I have to come up with a good
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Speaker 1: intro for this. I kept waking up in the middle
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Speaker 1: and I had cold sweats and I got nothing. Ever,
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Speaker 1: everybody sweats. Uh yeah, nice, Thanks Chuck. Um, you want
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Speaker 1: to know what I came up with. I think it
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Speaker 1: would be appropriate, Chuck, is your favorite use of Texader
0:52
Speaker 1: me in a movie? That's what I got. I'm gonna
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Speaker 1: go with Psycho Psycho. Yeah, that's the one I mentioned
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Speaker 1: article because you know Norman Bates had that creepy office
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Speaker 1: full of foul and beast mounted beast. Yeah, you know,
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Speaker 1: we're talking about Texas mmy and I think one of
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Speaker 1: the themes that will keep coming up is that depending
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Speaker 1: on how you pose an animal, it can either be
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Speaker 1: very cute or very menacing, and if you fill an
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Speaker 1: office as Norman Bates did with a bunch of menacing
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Speaker 1: looking stuff, dead animals, it's gonna be creepy. It's curtains
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Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, it is shower curtains. That's awful. This
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Speaker 1: is a listener request, and uh it's a Chuck Bryant article.
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Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna kick back and go yeah, right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: but thank you Scott and Los Angeles, who was inspired
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Speaker 1: by this query when he visited the Bass Pro Shop
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Speaker 1: in Rancho Cucamonga and he was a little taken aback
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Speaker 1: by all the stuffed and mounted I'm sorry, mounted animals. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and you're welcome. Best pro shops for that free plug, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: we have one here, you know. I've I'm going I'm
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Speaker 1: hoping they'll send us some free poles or something. So, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: when you wrote this article, did you know much about
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Speaker 1: text jermy already or was it just pretty much relegated
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Speaker 1: to psycho Psycho although my dad is a is an enthusiast,
2:16
Speaker 1: Holy cow, I can't believe this. I do have a
2:18
Speaker 1: great intro. Okay, let's hear it. I totally forgot all right,
2:22
Speaker 1: let's try it again. In so like, now, I think
2:24
Speaker 1: we should keep the first one. Yeah, let's do both.
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Speaker 1: The about Oh, I don't know. Three or four months ago,
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Speaker 1: you and I were coming home and she went around
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Speaker 1: the front to get the mail, and I was coming
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Speaker 1: in the back, and um, as I was unlocking the
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Speaker 1: back door, her baby baby no, and I stopped and
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Speaker 1: she thought somebody had broken in because the window was broken.
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Speaker 1: Front window. So we go and investigate. Right, there is
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Speaker 1: a huge hawk. I actually measured it from tail to head.
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Speaker 1: It was fifteen inches. You're kidding, an enormous hawk. Dead
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Speaker 1: is a doornail that is disco Right. How did this
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Speaker 1: not come to you when you were thinking of an interest.
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Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, this is crazy. That's weird.
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Speaker 1: So um, it was beautiful. Its neck was broken, but
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Speaker 1: that was it. It was still warm, It was clearly
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Speaker 1: in good shape, you know, well, aside from being dead,
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Speaker 1: and um, we're Our first thought was we need to
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Speaker 1: stuff this. This is this hawk came to us, gave
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Speaker 1: its life so it could sit in our study. And
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Speaker 1: um we looked into it and found that we would
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Speaker 1: have been arrested had we tried to. Yeah. Apparently in
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Speaker 1: Georgia hawks are protected and We definitely had a hawk.
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Speaker 1: It was a chicken hawk, you know, like the little
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Speaker 1: chicken hawk and the fog horn leghorn thing. You're a
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Speaker 1: chicken hawk and I'm a chicken right exactly, except this one.
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Speaker 1: Actually it could have taken a chicken pretty easy. Um,
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Speaker 1: but apparently they're protected and it'll raise a whole can
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Speaker 1: of worms if you try to get these things stuffed. Interesting,
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Speaker 1: which actually goes into a point that you make in
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Speaker 1: this article that if you have a hawk or a
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Speaker 1: deer or a beaver or any combination of those, uh,
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Speaker 1: and you take them to a text enrvous and you
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Speaker 1: expect some, as you put it, uh, hill billy mad scientists,
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Speaker 1: but the thirst for blood, you're going to be disappointed
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Speaker 1: because most of them are very gentle kind, loving, crotchety artists. Yes, right, yes,
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Speaker 1: for sure. Let's talk about taxidermy. Where did it come from? Now?
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Speaker 1: See man, what a great intro. Thank you. Uh. Taxidermy
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Speaker 1: Josh began as uh out of practicality in England because
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Speaker 1: of the need for leather, usable leather, So tanning hides
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Speaker 1: was where it all started. Yeah, I'll tan your hide.
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Speaker 1: Did you ever get told that? No, My parents were educated. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think my grandmother might have said that. I should
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Speaker 1: have said, look, do you want to make my button
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Speaker 1: to useable leather? She would have smacked me, she would have. So, uh,
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Speaker 1: it was kind of borne out of that. And then
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Speaker 1: also once the naturalist like James Cook and Darwin started
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Speaker 1: collecting odd animals, they worked some of the early most
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Speaker 1: the earliest taxidermists. Because if you're you know, Darwin, and
5:00
Speaker 1: then you're like, look this new species of turtle I
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Speaker 1: found and killed, it's like six months ago, and yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's not gonna work. So yeah, you said that for
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Speaker 1: they they started it for leather, Yeah, and to preserve specimens, right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: which makes sense. So okay, so Texas Jeremy has legitimate origins,
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Speaker 1: and uh, they were it was a little crude back
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Speaker 1: in those days. They literally like gutted and removed the
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Speaker 1: organs and stuffed it with like straw. But it didn't
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Speaker 1: work too well because they didn't preserve the animal and
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Speaker 1: like the eyes and the nose and the teeth would
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Speaker 1: rot of course, so it would be like like this
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Speaker 1: turtle and people be like you exactly, I don't know
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Speaker 1: what a turtle is, but I don't like it. Uh so, yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's how it started. Nice and it's kind of stayed well,
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Speaker 1: it's stayed the same from what is that the nineteenth centuries? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: James Cook, he was eighteenth century, right, Um, it's they
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Speaker 1: pretty much the same. I mean as far as what
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Speaker 1: they would do to the specimen, they would stuff it. Yeah,
6:08
Speaker 1: the process right, Um, it became a little more refined
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Speaker 1: as they figured out how they you know, I got
6:13
Speaker 1: to preserve the tongue somehow, Charles get rid of it
6:15
Speaker 1: all together. Yeah, that's what I would have done. Yeah,
6:18
Speaker 1: you can. You know, with the advent of plastics, that's
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Speaker 1: what plastic was really created for plastics and rubber tongue removal, well,
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Speaker 1: to create substitute tongues for taxidermy. Interesting little known fact
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Speaker 1: that I just made it is true, Okay, got me
6:32
Speaker 1: I feel like a sucker. Uh yeah, dude. It's stayed
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Speaker 1: the same till the nineteen seventies, which is kind of
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Speaker 1: a long time. And then uh, they began using they
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Speaker 1: quit stuffing basically and started using molds. The taxidermy revolution
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Speaker 1: as it's called, Yes, the Great taxidermy Revolution of the seventies,
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Speaker 1: I think Andrix wrote about that. So that's why they
6:51
Speaker 1: actually if you you don't say stuffed anymore and you
6:53
Speaker 1: say mounted, right, because they don't stuff them. They use
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Speaker 1: what you say, a polyurethane mold generally, yeah, a lot
6:58
Speaker 1: of times it's a foam carved mold, which actually that
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Speaker 1: brings up a good point. Taxidermists are artists. They are sculptors,
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Speaker 1: they are craftsmen, they are carpenters. It's a mix of
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Speaker 1: a lot of different disciplines. Artistic discipline so or industrial arts.
7:13
Speaker 1: You could say yes, sure, absolutely and chuck, Actually it's
7:18
Speaker 1: a um, I don't know if it's a dying art.
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Speaker 1: I don't get the impression from the article, but it
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Speaker 1: seems like the taxidermists are few and far between, especially
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Speaker 1: really skilled ones. Yeah, it's not the most common. It's
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Speaker 1: not like a Starbucks. Let's say, you don't see a
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Speaker 1: taxidermy shop on every corner. And I also got the
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Speaker 1: impressionel that you're kind enough to not say this explicitly,
7:39
Speaker 1: that texidermy exists in sort of a graduated level. So
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Speaker 1: you've got you know, you're the guy who started out
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Speaker 1: as a hobbyist maybe who's starting to make money on
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Speaker 1: the side, um doing taxidermy. For local hunters or fishermen,
7:54
Speaker 1: and then you go all the way up to the
7:55
Speaker 1: people who are just at the peak of their craft
7:58
Speaker 1: and they're working for like natural history museums in the
8:01
Speaker 1: Ottumn Society and all that, right, Yeah, exactly. And that's
8:03
Speaker 1: a good point too, because a lot of the a
8:05
Speaker 1: lot of taxidermists are our big time animal lovers, and
8:10
Speaker 1: they some of them don't even work with hunted animals,
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Speaker 1: so they'll they'll do like roadkill or like you said,
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Speaker 1: work for like Fernbank Science Center because they need their
8:19
Speaker 1: you know, Red Fox, not the comedian. That'd be kind
8:22
Speaker 1: of cool, though. Is he what museum is he in? Uh?
8:27
Speaker 1: He's in the Museum of Dirty Old Man. Yeah, that's good.
8:30
Speaker 1: If my mom would never let me watch Sanford and
8:32
Speaker 1: Son because she thought Red Fox is a dirty old man. Well,
8:34
Speaker 1: his stand up was very dirty. Yeah, Sanford and Son
8:37
Speaker 1: wasn't very dirty, of course. It's mainly just him faking
8:39
Speaker 1: heart attacks. Wheezy. Uh So, where are we, Elizabeth? Elizabeth,
8:46
Speaker 1: I'm coming to join you. You're right. Where did I
8:48
Speaker 1: get wheezy? Okay? God, it's awful. Uh So where are we?
8:55
Speaker 1: We are all over the match? Uck? We are you
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Speaker 1: said it's it's slow process. That's true, and that's for
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Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. Um, mainly, like you said, because
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Speaker 1: there's not a lot of taxidermists. So it's not like
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Speaker 1: it takes a year to necessarily mount your red fox,
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Speaker 1: but it's going to take a year for you to
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Speaker 1: get it. Probably, Yeah, sometimes because they have a you know,
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Speaker 1: a freezer full of dead animals. And then another reason
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Speaker 1: is because a lot of these guys, especially I imagine
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Speaker 1: with deer and other larger animals, Um, they send the
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Speaker 1: skin off to be commercially tanned, right, yeah, but just
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Speaker 1: because it takes up a lot of space and imagine
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Speaker 1: that in and of itself as a whole other art
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Speaker 1: and science. Oh yeah, definitely right. Yeah. We won't get
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Speaker 1: into tanning a whole lot because I don't know whole
9:36
Speaker 1: lot about it, to be honest, I don't either. We
9:39
Speaker 1: could do that for a podcast. We could. That's coming up,
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Speaker 1: Tested and Report two tanning. Uh, we should talk about
9:45
Speaker 1: cost a little bit before we get into the nuts
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Speaker 1: and bolts of the process. If you want a bear
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Speaker 1: skin rug, let's say, if you've shot a bear and
9:53
Speaker 1: you're a bad person and shot a bear. Uh, you
9:55
Speaker 1: can have a bear skin rug for about a grand,
9:58
Speaker 1: which is not bad. No, have you ever laid naked
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Speaker 1: on bear skin? It's worth a grand? Uh my dad
10:03
Speaker 1: has a bear skin rock, so I imagine you have
10:05
Speaker 1: laid naked unbers and now I haven't. Actually I tried
10:08
Speaker 1: to walk around it as much as possible. Uh. If
10:12
Speaker 1: you want that bear standing up, and I would guess
10:15
Speaker 1: in a pose like uh kind of butcher, you sure?
10:20
Speaker 1: That'd be about two grand, which I found surprising. I mean,
10:23
Speaker 1: going from bear skin rug for a grand, which seems
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Speaker 1: reasonable to me, to a full bear standing menacingly for
10:30
Speaker 1: just an extra grand. I think that's worth saving up for,
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Speaker 1: don't you. Yeah, it takes up a lot more room,
10:35
Speaker 1: though well not necessarily. I mean, if you have high ceilings,
10:37
Speaker 1: you're set. It's true in an empty corner. Yeah. Uh.
10:41
Speaker 1: Then these are ballparked figures. So if you're a taxidermist
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Speaker 1: or an enthusiast and you say, no, actually that would
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Speaker 1: cost this were we did our best here with the numbers.
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Speaker 1: Chuck did as best here with the numbers, and bravo, Chuck.
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Speaker 1: The thing that surprised me. Everything else sounded pretty uh,
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Speaker 1: pretty standard, like a mounted deer from what shoulders and
10:58
Speaker 1: antlers is about five to sift um. The thing that
11:03
Speaker 1: surprised me was that a fish costs about eighteen bucks
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Speaker 1: an inch. They sounded like in this article the hardest
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Speaker 1: thing to mount. Yeah, it is, but it's also small, Okay,
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Speaker 1: so I don't think it takes quite as much time
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Speaker 1: even though it is artistically harder. I think it sounds like, yeah,
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Speaker 1: let's get into this. Why chuck our fish so hard
11:25
Speaker 1: to mount? Well, one reason, my friend, is that a
11:28
Speaker 1: fish loses its color as it dries out. So the
11:31
Speaker 1: whole thing, it's not like you know, when they wrap
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Speaker 1: a deer carcass I'm sorry, a dear skin around the mold.
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Speaker 1: That's pretty much it. But you have to literally paint
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Speaker 1: the fish all those little skills by scale, right, a
11:43
Speaker 1: lot of scales. Yeah, that's a lot of skills. It's
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Speaker 1: a lot of time and work for eighteen bucks an inch.
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Speaker 1: Don't think so. Yeah, I would think they cost like
11:51
Speaker 1: standing bear type prices, you know. And there's different processes
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Speaker 1: depending on the kind of fish, right, warm water fish
11:58
Speaker 1: like bass is going to be largely what you bring
12:01
Speaker 1: in as far as you know, the reality of it,
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Speaker 1: goes right, Like the bass you bring in and then
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Speaker 1: the bats you get mounted are going to be pretty
12:10
Speaker 1: much the same thing. But with the saltwater fish, these
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Speaker 1: things are basically the texidermist takes a photo of the
12:16
Speaker 1: fish you brought in and then completely remakes it out
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Speaker 1: of synthetic materials, so the fish you brought in is
12:24
Speaker 1: no longer with us. Yeah, Like if you see you know,
12:27
Speaker 1: the marlin and T. G. I. Friday's on the wall,
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Speaker 1: that's almost a chance that that's not a real marlin
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Speaker 1: at all. Right, And the cool thing about this is
12:36
Speaker 1: since it's all the same anyway, like you're not actually
12:39
Speaker 1: going to get the fish you catch, You're going to
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Speaker 1: basically get a life size replica of it. Um. This
12:46
Speaker 1: is really popular among catch and released sport fishermen, right,
12:50
Speaker 1: or guys who want to eat their fish. Sure, I
12:52
Speaker 1: didn't mention that, but and why wouldn't you Why wouldn't
12:55
Speaker 1: you eat a marlin that you caught with your bare
12:57
Speaker 1: hand through noodling? You know? Oh man? Could you imagine? Uh? So,
13:01
Speaker 1: should we talk a little bit about the fish process?
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Speaker 1: What you do if you if you've got the skin
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Speaker 1: mount is what it's called, which is what you do
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Speaker 1: with the bass, you um remove the inside of the fish,
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Speaker 1: all all the meat and bones that you can and
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Speaker 1: except for the head that you can not get certain
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Speaker 1: meat out of the head and tail area. You don't
13:21
Speaker 1: want to eat meat head or head meat head meat
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Speaker 1: and uh. What you do then as you inject um
13:27
Speaker 1: like borax and salt preservatives into the meat that you
13:32
Speaker 1: can't get out to keep it from spoiling. And uh
13:36
Speaker 1: again with the I think cold water fish. Yeah, the
13:39
Speaker 1: cold water fish, the skin will actually be the same
13:42
Speaker 1: that you brought in, right, But they're going they can't
13:46
Speaker 1: stuff it. It's not possible for them to stuff it,
13:48
Speaker 1: like they could have warm water fish like with maybe
13:50
Speaker 1: hard pack sawdust. Yeah, cold water fish. Um like salmon, sure,
13:55
Speaker 1: uh they they it's so thin that you'll be able
13:58
Speaker 1: to see the sawdust, right, Like, why does your salmon
14:00
Speaker 1: have sawdust in it? And I would say, well, because
14:02
Speaker 1: it's mounted. Uh my impression is too with the the sawdust.
14:09
Speaker 1: I might be wrong here, but is that you You
14:11
Speaker 1: might use sawdust if it's just the straight fish on
14:14
Speaker 1: a plaque. But if you want to show your bass
14:17
Speaker 1: with the curved tail leaping from the water in mid fight,
14:21
Speaker 1: then that's when you're gonna have to make the poly
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Speaker 1: your thing mold and you know, carved into whatever shape
14:28
Speaker 1: that you want. And those molds in and of themselves
14:30
Speaker 1: are a work of art, especially with deer. Oh yeah right, sure.
14:34
Speaker 1: So like if you if you actually pulled the skin
14:37
Speaker 1: off of a stuffed deer, you're gonna find intricately carved muscles, bone,
14:42
Speaker 1: mass veins. Yeah. Uh that's pretty serious stuff, right, Yeah,
14:47
Speaker 1: that's like big time sculpting. Yeah. And uh so did
14:50
Speaker 1: you like that transition to deer? I did? Are we
14:52
Speaker 1: done with fish? We're done with fish? I think, well
14:54
Speaker 1: we should just say they also have to salt the
14:56
Speaker 1: fish skin on the inside because if it dries out
14:59
Speaker 1: to quick, it'll shrink, which you don't want. And you,
15:02
Speaker 1: like we said earlier, you need to paint the fish
15:04
Speaker 1: at the end, pop out the eyeballs because they will rot,
15:08
Speaker 1: and insert your little glass eyeballs that you stick in
15:12
Speaker 1: with a little pin on the back. Well, that's the
15:14
Speaker 1: real common theme of this podcast is the last step
15:16
Speaker 1: is taking out the eyeballs and putting in fake ones, right,
15:19
Speaker 1: and just about every single one of these pretty much. Yeah,
15:22
Speaker 1: same with deer. Yeah, that was much worse transition. So
15:27
Speaker 1: we're we're at the deer. And I should say too,
15:29
Speaker 1: this is a broad overview. They write like volumes of
15:32
Speaker 1: books on how to do deer taxidermy, so we're not
15:35
Speaker 1: gonna like sum that up in four and a half minutes.
15:38
Speaker 1: The one thing that you're you're gonna find in every
15:40
Speaker 1: taxidermy book on stuffing deer is the first thing you
15:43
Speaker 1: have to do is skin it. Yes, you want to
15:45
Speaker 1: skin that deer. And what you have after you skin
15:48
Speaker 1: the deer is a cape. That's what it's called, right Domistically,
15:52
Speaker 1: look at my dear cap. I do won'der? How many
15:54
Speaker 1: taxidermists have that joke? I bet a lot of them do, yes, Josh.
15:57
Speaker 1: And the goal here when you're skinning the deer, or
16:00
Speaker 1: if you're a taxidermist, you want to make as few
16:03
Speaker 1: cuts as possible. What that still allow you to get
16:06
Speaker 1: the organs and the carcass and everything out, Because if
16:12
Speaker 1: if if you're let's say, you can't get your deer
16:14
Speaker 1: to the taxi dermists in a few days, you have
16:16
Speaker 1: to do it yourself as a hunter. And if you're
16:18
Speaker 1: not very good at it and you make too many
16:19
Speaker 1: cuts and you mangle the deer, then you're gonna make
16:21
Speaker 1: it really hard for the taxidermists. Right. The more incisions
16:24
Speaker 1: you have, the more sewing the taxidermist has to do,
16:27
Speaker 1: and the angrier the taxidermists is going to be. Right,
16:30
Speaker 1: And like you said, they're crotchety. So salt comes into
16:33
Speaker 1: play here too. Um. I guess they use salt to
16:36
Speaker 1: preserve just about everything, right, And like you said, it's
16:38
Speaker 1: not table salt, it's like borax. Yeah. Um, So they
16:42
Speaker 1: use salt to preserve the areas around, like the mucous
16:46
Speaker 1: membranes that they can't really cut out without making the
16:49
Speaker 1: deer look ghoulish. Right, And it also tightens up the
16:52
Speaker 1: skin and the hair follicles, which is a good thing
16:54
Speaker 1: because you don't want the hair to fall out. And uh,
16:58
Speaker 1: we're else around the nose and between the toes or
17:01
Speaker 1: I guess the hoofs. Yeah, so that you said toes
17:03
Speaker 1: And I was like, did you have toes? I did
17:05
Speaker 1: say toes, didn't I did? I think that should probably
17:08
Speaker 1: be changed. I don't know. I think it should be
17:10
Speaker 1: like a little easter egg that only stuff you should know. Uh,
17:16
Speaker 1: so you know, once the skin dries out, you've got
17:19
Speaker 1: to prepare your mold, or while it's drying out, you're
17:21
Speaker 1: you're carving your mold, which, like we said, is very
17:24
Speaker 1: like intricate sculpting. These are true artists at work, right,
17:27
Speaker 1: And remember the skin might not even be in the
17:29
Speaker 1: same place that the texta Germots may have sent it
17:32
Speaker 1: off to a commercial tannery. So what what comes into
17:35
Speaker 1: play first and foremost is taking incredibly precise measurements, because
17:39
Speaker 1: imagine making a mold just based on measurements you took
17:42
Speaker 1: while the skin is not even there, so you can't
17:44
Speaker 1: just throw it over to to have a rough estimate
17:46
Speaker 1: of how you're doing. And as you put it, if
17:48
Speaker 1: you missed the mark by a couple of inches, you're
17:51
Speaker 1: gonna have a saggy deer. Yeah, that would be no good. So, yeah,
17:56
Speaker 1: you're right. Accurate measuring is is really the first step.
17:58
Speaker 1: Then they removed the skull and discard it, and discard
18:01
Speaker 1: it because you don't need the skull anymore. You remove
18:04
Speaker 1: the antlers, but you hang onto the antlers obviously because
18:07
Speaker 1: you need to screw those back onto your foam head.
18:12
Speaker 1: It sounds really gross, it does, Yeah, I mean, if
18:15
Speaker 1: you really look too deeply into this. It's kind of ghastly.
18:19
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. Yeah, I wouldn't want to see it,
18:22
Speaker 1: and you know, in practice, but it's fun to talk about.
18:26
Speaker 1: Uh So at that point, Josh, you have let's say
18:29
Speaker 1: you've got your skin back, you've got your mold done,
18:32
Speaker 1: and you kind of um slip it on over the
18:35
Speaker 1: mold as if you would be putting on a sweatshirt.
18:38
Speaker 1: Make sure it's all nice and tight. Sew it up
18:40
Speaker 1: skin sweats It's like buffalo bill, Yeah exactly, and you
18:46
Speaker 1: pomp in. You popped in the eyes, the glass eyes, which,
18:51
Speaker 1: as we say, is usually the last thing you do.
18:54
Speaker 1: Then you um, once it's all sewed up and everything
18:56
Speaker 1: you mounted on a plaque, like you said from about
18:58
Speaker 1: the shoulder, and give it back to your customer and
19:01
Speaker 1: bing bang boom, bing bang boom, get your six fifty bucks,
19:05
Speaker 1: not bad, and go back to work on another one.
19:08
Speaker 1: It's never ending, like a bird. Let's say, yeah, nice,
19:12
Speaker 1: Should we talk about foul? Foul is the left broad
19:15
Speaker 1: category of things that are generally stuffed. Sorry, mounted, don't
19:20
Speaker 1: look at me like that. Right, I'll go to my
19:22
Speaker 1: dad's house. You'd be surprised he's got raccoons and the
19:27
Speaker 1: bear thing hawk and flight. H he has a hawk?
19:32
Speaker 1: How does he have a hawk? Okay, yeah, he has
19:37
Speaker 1: a hawk in fight or maybe it's a falcon. See,
19:39
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any any underground taxidermist. And he's got
19:44
Speaker 1: a guy can't find those in the phone book. And
19:45
Speaker 1: he's got a bobcat. Of course, the bobcat is uh,
19:49
Speaker 1: you know they are so cute, teeth bared. This one's not.
19:52
Speaker 1: Does your dad hunt? Now? He just hits things with
19:55
Speaker 1: his car a lot. Now, he's an animal lover and
19:58
Speaker 1: when he will see some road kill, he would uh
20:01
Speaker 1: clean up the road kill and then get the taxidermists.
20:04
Speaker 1: And it's just a theme in his house. He's a
20:06
Speaker 1: he's a country guy. That's cool, yeah, Or is it
20:10
Speaker 1: all as long as he's not killing them? No, of
20:12
Speaker 1: course not. And you know he's not. Yeah, I see,
20:16
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with that. Now, Like we said, you
20:17
Speaker 1: got to a natural history museum, and you're not gonna
20:19
Speaker 1: say these people are awful for mounting the spot. Some
20:23
Speaker 1: people would you you forget we exist pretty close to
20:26
Speaker 1: the center and a lot of stuff. Alright, So we're
20:30
Speaker 1: at foul Josh. The first thing you do with foul
20:32
Speaker 1: like with the rest is skin. It take out all
20:34
Speaker 1: the meat and bones, but you leave the feet and
20:36
Speaker 1: talents because you don't want to recreate those. And you
20:41
Speaker 1: and then I actually saw a video and this is
20:43
Speaker 1: literally what they do. They wash and just like a
20:46
Speaker 1: tub with dishwater. They washed the feathers in the skin
20:51
Speaker 1: because it's greasy and they don't want that. No, although
20:55
Speaker 1: if it is, if it's a duck, you better be
20:57
Speaker 1: keeping that fat for cookie purposes. Yeah. Man, there's nothing
21:01
Speaker 1: better than duck fat, that's true. Um. You dry it
21:06
Speaker 1: with a with a hair dryer, which will fluff up
21:08
Speaker 1: the feathers again. And then you salt the remaining moisture
21:12
Speaker 1: like with everything else, because the salt will dry it
21:13
Speaker 1: out real good. You turn it inside out. You stuff
21:17
Speaker 1: the head with a non shrinking clay and so you've
21:21
Speaker 1: got a little hard headed bird now with a clay head. Uh.
21:24
Speaker 1: Then you make your neck and body again with the
21:28
Speaker 1: eurothane foam. You stretch it over. You put wires under
21:33
Speaker 1: the wings, um under the skin of the wings, tied
21:36
Speaker 1: off with dental floss because you want to keep um,
21:39
Speaker 1: keep the wings you know, stiff, I guess oh, actually
21:43
Speaker 1: we should have said that with a with the fish
21:45
Speaker 1: um uh fins. They they spread those out and tack
21:49
Speaker 1: them to a cardboard backer, because you want your fish
21:53
Speaker 1: fins to be all spread out and cool. Look into
21:55
Speaker 1: right when when they're dried and preserved with salt, can
21:58
Speaker 1: you take the tax out? Well yeah, but then that's
22:01
Speaker 1: when you put the resin over it, which is the
22:03
Speaker 1: final step, and that keeps everything you know, lack it. Yeah,
22:06
Speaker 1: that's why shiny, where are we here with the with
22:10
Speaker 1: the uh, with the foul? I think you just so
22:13
Speaker 1: the little sucker up. Once everything's in place, don't forget
22:15
Speaker 1: the last step what's that? And put in fake ones
22:20
Speaker 1: and then you shape it. Once everything's in there, you
22:22
Speaker 1: kind of shape it if you want, you know, bird
22:24
Speaker 1: in flight or bird pecking it at seed? Imagine they
22:28
Speaker 1: have little titles like that. Then that's what you do,
22:31
Speaker 1: and then you get your what like two four hundred
22:33
Speaker 1: bucks I think, and then you go work on the
22:35
Speaker 1: next one because uh, and you might think that Chuck
22:41
Speaker 1: just gave you everything you need to know about taxidermy.
22:44
Speaker 1: You're wrong, you're wrong. You can actually go to school
22:47
Speaker 1: for this, right, two to four grand for taxidermy school. Yeah. Right,
22:52
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to know about this. As Chuck
22:54
Speaker 1: said about with just deer alone, the entire books are
22:58
Speaker 1: written on the subject of how to how to mount
23:00
Speaker 1: them properly? Right, Yeah, and um, I also make the
23:03
Speaker 1: point if you're interested in having if you see some
23:05
Speaker 1: road kill and you're like, wow, I would love that
23:07
Speaker 1: muskrat in my office, do your homework and go visit
23:10
Speaker 1: the taxidermist and check out their work. Like with anything,
23:13
Speaker 1: you get what you pay for. And there are a
23:14
Speaker 1: lot of bad taxidermy jobs out there. I saw some
23:18
Speaker 1: photos in the research is pretty funny. And don't just
23:20
Speaker 1: carry it around in your pocket until you go to
23:22
Speaker 1: the taxidermist showing it to people people don't like. That's good.
23:25
Speaker 1: There are some things that you will want to do
23:28
Speaker 1: if you do come across some roague killer. However, you
23:31
Speaker 1: come upon a dead animal that you want to stuff
23:34
Speaker 1: right mount Mount um like, for example, you if you
23:39
Speaker 1: have a birth. I thought this was very clever and
23:40
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense say that. Um I
23:43
Speaker 1: would have been able to have that hawk mounted. I
23:47
Speaker 1: should have put it in a stocking like pantyhose keeps
23:51
Speaker 1: the feathers from moving about that plus is sexy. Uh,
23:56
Speaker 1: if you if you have a deer that you don't
23:58
Speaker 1: want to drag your deer through the woods if you
24:00
Speaker 1: can help it, because that'll a lot of the hair
24:02
Speaker 1: will fall off and we'll mess that up. You want
24:04
Speaker 1: to do that, But unfortunately, most motorists who pick up
24:07
Speaker 1: road kill aren't familiar with how to field dressed a deer. Yeah,
24:11
Speaker 1: that's true, but if you're a hunter, you're probably pretty
24:13
Speaker 1: good at it, unless you're a lousy hunter like you're new.
24:16
Speaker 1: But if you're a lousy hunter, you probably wouldn't hit
24:18
Speaker 1: the deer anyway, that's true. They say not to wrap
24:22
Speaker 1: a fish in newspaper because it will soak up the
24:24
Speaker 1: moisture and you want to wrap it in a wet
24:26
Speaker 1: towel with the fins very smoothed and in place. We
24:30
Speaker 1: need to talk about the jack lope. Well, yeah, rogue
24:33
Speaker 1: taxed ermy right. Yeah, Well we'll go ahead and tell
24:36
Speaker 1: what a jack o lopez. Some people might not have
24:37
Speaker 1: seen these. Really you think everyone has seen one? But
24:40
Speaker 1: I think everybody's seen a jack lope. But okay, alright, Uh,
24:44
Speaker 1: jack lope is a shoulder mounted rabbit shoulder ahead with
24:48
Speaker 1: antlers attached. Yes, that's a jack lope and it came
24:51
Speaker 1: about in the nineteen thirties by a couple of amateur
24:54
Speaker 1: taxidermists in Wyoming, Right brothers, Right, Yeah, that's the story.
24:58
Speaker 1: It maybe legend, but apparently the Mayor Rick brothers legend
25:02
Speaker 1: has it. They went hunting, came home with a rabbit,
25:05
Speaker 1: flew it onto a table and it slid over to
25:07
Speaker 1: where it ted met two antlers that were laying on
25:09
Speaker 1: the table, and they went, hey, man, we should do that,
25:13
Speaker 1: like it's a real thing. And they did, and they
25:17
Speaker 1: did and called it the jackalo and it took off
25:18
Speaker 1: from there, and as I said, it gave birth to
25:22
Speaker 1: a type of taxidermy called rogue texermy. Right yeah, also
25:25
Speaker 1: called carcass art. Carcass art. I have a website who
25:29
Speaker 1: to mention? What's that? It's called Crappy Taxidermy dot com. Oh,
25:33
Speaker 1: is that what I was talking about with the bad
25:34
Speaker 1: taxidermy jobs. No, actually, it's a terrible name for it.
25:37
Speaker 1: I don't know if they originally started out with like
25:40
Speaker 1: just terrible taxidermy or whatever, but the images are showing
25:44
Speaker 1: on the site they were like incredible text ermy. But
25:47
Speaker 1: it's all carcass art. It's all rogue taxidermy. Oh that's
25:49
Speaker 1: where you can see like a goat with wings. Yeah,
25:51
Speaker 1: definitely stuff like that. Um. They had one a woman
25:55
Speaker 1: was wearing a hat and I don't know how they
25:58
Speaker 1: did it, but it had three birds like pulling at
26:00
Speaker 1: her hat above, hovering above the hat. Wait, the hat
26:04
Speaker 1: was the art, or they stuffed the woman, the hat
26:07
Speaker 1: was the art. Okay, it was a live woman wearing it,
26:09
Speaker 1: presumably unless this was some sort of snuff picture. Um.
26:13
Speaker 1: But the birds were off of the hat, hovering over it,
26:17
Speaker 1: pulling at the hat, and it was just amazing. I
26:21
Speaker 1: don't know how long this would have taken somebody. But
26:23
Speaker 1: my favorite is this one. It is a bull calf
26:27
Speaker 1: standing on top of a puma standing on top of
26:30
Speaker 1: a falcon. Really, for some reason, that reminds me of
26:35
Speaker 1: a tur ducking. I don't know why. Yeah, interesting with
26:38
Speaker 1: the tur duck. And then you take it and to
26:40
Speaker 1: smush it all together. Why didn't you send me a
26:41
Speaker 1: picture of this? I don't know. We should have one
26:44
Speaker 1: in this office right now, framed, which I agree. So
26:47
Speaker 1: is that it that taxidermy? Seems like it. That's uh
26:51
Speaker 1: that's the broad scope. There's a lot more details in that,
26:54
Speaker 1: and we'd like to hear from taxidermists if you're out there.
26:57
Speaker 1: Nice article, but oh, one more tip, don't bug your taxidermists.
27:03
Speaker 1: Oh this is where the crostity part comes. Yeah, they're
27:05
Speaker 1: notorious for like if you call and say, is my
27:08
Speaker 1: is my bobcat ready, sir? They will will not be
27:12
Speaker 1: They don't take kindly to that. Apparently they don't because
27:15
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're stuffing things all day. Where do
27:20
Speaker 1: the wise Chuck Bryant nicely done? Would you want to
27:22
Speaker 1: pick up a phone? If you're like inserting an eyeball
27:25
Speaker 1: from some yokel that's like, do you have my red
27:27
Speaker 1: fox ready? Sir? What is it with you in red foxes?
27:30
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess because my dad has one. Well,
27:33
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about taxidermy, right, and
27:36
Speaker 1: you want to see some pretty cool photos with hilarious
27:39
Speaker 1: captions underneath, you can type taxidermy in the handy search
27:43
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com, which means that
27:46
Speaker 1: it is time for listener mail. Yes, indeed, Josh, I'm
27:52
Speaker 1: gonna call this sorority thief all right? And I did
27:58
Speaker 1: get permission to read this because I was. I'm not
28:00
Speaker 1: sure if they wanted us out there, Josh and Chuck.
28:02
Speaker 1: I have recently become a huge fan of the podcast,
28:05
Speaker 1: or huge if you're from New York. I have a
28:08
Speaker 1: story about kleptomania. I'm currently an executive member for a
28:11
Speaker 1: sorority at my university. Recently, girls have been getting their
28:14
Speaker 1: things stolen in their rooms in the sorority house. A
28:18
Speaker 1: few thousand dollars was stolen from the philanthropy account. That's
28:21
Speaker 1: just awful. Designer dress was stolen out of a girl's closet.
28:25
Speaker 1: Not as bad, and a girl's eye touch was stolen,
28:28
Speaker 1: twenty capsules of a girl's A D D prescription meds,
28:32
Speaker 1: and the list goes on. Anyways, the other day, a
28:35
Speaker 1: girl left a note on another girl's door calling her
28:37
Speaker 1: a klepto and to see the sorority drama unfolding and
28:42
Speaker 1: some questionable names, causing a rather large uproar in the house.
28:46
Speaker 1: We had an emergency executive meeting, and everyone kept on
28:49
Speaker 1: labeling this thief as a klepto. I finally sat everyone
28:52
Speaker 1: down and made them listen to a portion of your
28:54
Speaker 1: podcast in order for them to quit using this term
28:58
Speaker 1: in the wrong context and implement some comic relief in
29:01
Speaker 1: the midst of this feminine chaos. Could you imagine? Yeah,
29:06
Speaker 1: we ended up listening to the whole podcast, and afterwards
29:09
Speaker 1: we were able to lessen some of the drama. Although
29:12
Speaker 1: the identity of the culprit has not yet been revealed,
29:15
Speaker 1: we have startled, uh sorry, started implementing your podcast to
29:19
Speaker 1: bring us together. This may be a little weird, but
29:21
Speaker 1: y'all have helped us come back together and stop being
29:23
Speaker 1: so caddie. Welcome to living in a house of eighty girls.
29:28
Speaker 1: So sweet. Yeah. Anyways, you guys teach us new things
29:32
Speaker 1: all the time. You make us laugh, you make as think.
29:34
Speaker 1: Thank you for all you share and y'all are awesome.
29:38
Speaker 1: Make more than just two a week from Julia V.
29:42
Speaker 1: Thank you Julia, thanks to your sorority? Which one can
29:45
Speaker 1: we say? Uh No, she didn't actually say, or the
29:48
Speaker 1: university and uh I did tell her to keep in
29:51
Speaker 1: touch though, because I wanted to know who this thieving
29:54
Speaker 1: sorority member was. God so many. Do you have a
30:01
Speaker 1: standard plane email that you'd like to send us? You
30:05
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30:10
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