GET STUFFED

"I felt like Norman Bates from Psycho."

Sarah describes herself as an ethical taxidermist, which for her means that she uses animals that haven’t been killed solely to be preserved, and often mounts roadkill and animals found by the public. “They call us vultures, someone who looks for dead things,” she said, “there’s no blanket rule when it comes to ethical taxidermy, but that’s what it means to me.” This attitude towards taxidermy is one that is shared widely in the community where most, if not all, taxidermists carry out their craft doing the least amount of harm to animals. Mike Gadd, a taxidermist from Boston Spa, has been in business for over 40 years and said things used to be much different when he first started. “I would go to the local game dealer after a big shoot and buy one of their hundreds of hares,” he said. “Now I think more about where the animal came from, taxidermy has given me a real appreciation of wildlife and conservation.”

Occasionally, Sarah will get a commission to mount someone’s pet, though she tends to stick to her comfort zone of birds. “It’s very hard to recreate the personality of a pet, especially when it comes to cats and dogs,” she said, “I can make a Jack Russell look like a Jack Russell, but I personally don’t have the skill to make it look like your Jack Russell.” Finding a taxidermist is similar to finding a tattoo artist or garden landscaper, you have to be familiar with and like their previous work, “taxidermy has limits, it can’t bring your pet back but there are some brilliant taxidermists out there.”

Though she has worked on various animals in the past, and has three freezers full of a variety of specimens, Sarah specialises in mounting birds. “I’ve definitely done some funny looking birds but I find it so much easier than a mammal,” she said. “So much of the work has already been done for you because you leave the skull in so the beak is in the correct place.” she said, To mount a specimen takes a steady hand and a certain amount of expertise, particularly when stuffing the skin; “making an animal look like it did when it was alive takes so much artistic skill, though I tend to think of it like engineering or carpentry, all very numbers based.”

One of Sarah’s future projects is a 3 foot long body of a Tegu lizard sitting in her freezer. It was given to her by a pet shop owner in Sherwood after it died and is one of her prized possessions. “He was a local celebrity back in 2012, he used to roam freely around the pet shop and people would freak out – it was hilarious,” she said. “I’ve had him for ages but I’m not quite brave enough to work on him yet”. Sarah keeps a variety of specimens in her freezer, recently having a box of parrots delivered, as well as taking in any animals that are offered to her. “There’s a big taxidermy community in the East Midlands and on Facebook so we do quite a lot of swaps, its great when someone has a specimen you’d really like.”

One of her stand out experiences in her career was when her and a friend mounted a King Penguin to be displayed at her museum. “It ended up taking about 20 days in all, and 3 of those I spent washing the fat off the skin – she was a very stinky penguin.

“At one point I stood on the table while my friend pulled the skin down – I kept thinking how shocking it would be if someone had walked into the room while I was stood on the table holding a bloody penguin.” It never bothers Sarah to be handling dead animals, and it doesn’t register to her that I might be gross or disgusting. “The only time I’ve ever had to stop working on an animal was when I tried my first badger,” she said, “I freaked out while I was skinning it because it smelt a bit too much like a dog and I felt like Norman Bates from Psycho.” But generally, it doesn’t bother her to be working on dead animals, even going so far as to defrost her specimens in her fridge before working on them - “My partner’s always really angry about that.”