On the job
ROSHANA VANDER WALL RUNS DROP DEAD GORGEOUS TAXIDERMY.
When I was in grade 2, we went on an excursion to the Australian Museum. Somewhere near the end they took us into this little room full of specimens and taxidermy, and things you could actually pick up and play with. You could pat a sleeping feral cat or a tiny saltwater crocodile, and I was like, “This is just unreal!” I ran home and picked up my cat and was like, “When you die, this is what’s going to happen.” Of course, 18 years later, when she finally did die, I had no taxidermy skills.
I looked into places I could learn, and called up a bunch of commercial taxidermists. They said, “Latch onto a taxidermist and volunteer as an apprentice – that's really the only way.” I was like, “But I work full-time! I have no time for this!” Everybody knew I loved taxidermy. A friend even bought me a how-to book, and I read it, but the idea of just picking something up randomly and having a go felt a bit weird. A little too serial-killer-ish. Then one of my mates heard about a Melbourne company called Rest in Pieces that teaches people how to preserve animal specimens. They were running a class in Sydney: skeletal articulation on a little mouse. They teach you how to skin it and prepare it. Then, once you have the cleaned skeleton, you pose it and glue the bones together. I was like, “I love this!”
I did lots more classes with Rest in Pieces, and now I teach for them as well! I also run my own studio, Drop Dead Gorgeous Taxidermy. I have a Master of Research in Neuroscience, and most of the week I’m a research assistant for a visual neuroscience group (which focuses on the visual system of the body). I don’t work in the lab on Fridays, so that’s my Drop Dead Gorgeous time. My studio is in my basement, so even if I can’t dedicate a whole day, I’ll tidy the workspace or go through my freezer catalogue and be like, “I’ll have time to skin this today, but I won’t have time to build the body, so I’ll just put the skin back in the freezer.”
The taxidermy industry in Australia is geared towards museums, collections and a lot of restaurants, as well. Or people use the specimens as home décor – I get commissions for that. There are a few different ways of preserving things: skeletons, entomology, wet specimens (which are housed in liquid in a jar) and taxidermy. People always ask me what’s inside. With modern taxidermy, it’s a really dense foam sculpture of the body, then you wrap the skin around it. Also – they’re not real eyes! They’re made of glass or really high-grade acrylic.
I practise sustainable taxidermy, so specimens come to me in various ways, like euthanised ferals from vets, or animals that have been taken in by wildlife rescue but were too ill to save. There are a number of laws surrounding native animals. For instance, I have a New South Wales Taxidermy Licence, which allows me to work with native animals. If you don’t have one of those, though, you can’t legally obtain any deceased natives. Basically, it’s so specimens can be tracked. We don’t want them to be purposefully killed or just traded willy-nilly.
A lot of taxidermists will work on feral species, which is great. Foxes, rabbits, feral cats, feral dogs. The bigger game, too, like pigs and deer. Things that shouldn't be here to start with. There's this big myth that taxidermists go out and kill everything. People say, “How could you do that to that animal?” But it’s like, “That animal was long dead when I found it. It wasn’t going anywhere.” All sorts of different people are into taxidermy, and will practise it or just collect it. It’s a really inclusive community, because we all realise we’re just a little bit weird. Plus, I just love dead things.