Taxidermy

Orientation Term: Taxidermy (2019)

How Stuff Works!

GOAL(s): The project was about taxidermy, I have an interest in taxidermy and I wanted to see the process of taxidermy, how they do it, and what they do to make it. The steps and process of how it works. The whole project revolved around the process and what goes into making the actual taxidermy piece, my result would be to make an actual piece. The resources that I got from research, looking up videos, and from the person that I interviewed for my research on how to get the result. Taxidermy is something that I have been interested in for a little while now, it's even something that my dad was interested in when he was a kid.

REFLECTION: I learned a lot, it was something that I was quite interested in and wanted to do, I learned what they stuff in the animal to maintain its shape, I learned how to tan and why you need to do it, and everything that needs to be taken off of the hide for it to not decay. The biggest take-a-way would be that I was flustered with the planning aspect of it quite a lot, I usually don't do it and I don't plan to honestly, I got pestered to plan which caused me to clash with my Adviser. I was not able to get the taxidermy piece because it was already starting to decay. The interview went very weirdly but worked well in the end, I enjoyed going out and talking to someone that was an actual professional in the field. Being pestered and hassled about things. To come more prepared with questions that made my interview go more smoothly and to not have short answers, to not be pestered for the result. The result could have been better than it was.

Part 1-4

OUTCOME: The outcomes were to learn the process of taxidermy and to have a result of a piece of taxidermy, having an actual mount of that. I met the goal of learning the process, answering a few of the main questions that I had. I planned to have everything done on the 11th because I was leaving to go somewhere. I plan to have the end product be my main focus in the last couple of weeks because I have finished everything else. The result of that might not look like a result product. The challenges that I faced were the people around me hassling me which didn't help, if anything it made it worse. I was happy when the interview due date got changed so I handed that in on time. The fact that I had to finish everything before most of the other people was something that was on my mind. The end product of the taxidermy piece was the main challenge, with having everything in my head that I know I needed to do but was just waiting on roadkill.

After the project was done and looking for roadkill, I finally found one on the side of the road and decided to do something with it. The animal was a Squirrel, that wasn't badly hurt. There was one hole that was underneath the right arm that I worked around. I started to skin it with the Exacto knife that I had because it was the only thing that I was comfortable with. I didn't want to mess anything up nor did I want a big massive knife to use on a small dainty Squirrel. When skinning I made sure that no blood got on the hide as well as the guts didn't come spilling out to ruin the hide. I thought about tanning it but I didn't have the tanning material to do that with, I salted it to let it dry, but I later stopped working on it because a new project had started and I needed to focus on that.