Beasts of Halloween terrify all year at Natural History Museum
Bats, wolves and more are the almost-living dead, thanks to a taxidermist
Like a swarm of bats or a thirsty vampire, Halloween is almost upon us, and mazes, monsters, hayrides and spectacular light shows are offering family fun across the Southland.
At the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles in Exposition Park, Boney Island's animatronic skeletons have taken over the outside “Hauntington Gardens,” where you can listen to Audrey II-like singing carnivorous plants and catch the green-lit water show, among other spooky delights.
Also outside is the Spider Pavilion, which contains hundreds of the industrious, insect-eating beasties, and is on site for another month. Spiders are some people's worst nightmare, however, and they certainly scared Tim Bovard, the museum's taxidermist, as a young child.
“When I was 3 years old, I took something to show my neighbor,” he recalls. “I didn't know it, but it was a fully grown, adult female black widow spider, and thank goodness, she was very calm and took it gently from me.”
For years afterward, Bovard, who is the last actively employed museum taxidermist in the whole of North America, had nightmares about a black widow being in his bed.
“I had to get up, pull out the sheets and check to see there was nothing there,” he said while showcasing some of the museum's other scares, which are on exhibit throughout the year, not just at Halloween.
There are mounted bats, big cats, spiders, beetles, cockroaches and snakes, and plenty of big beasts with big teeth, including the museum's famous dinosaurs. Some specimens of those creepy crawlies are alive
Tim Bovard, the taxidermist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, shows two examples of his work — a black jaguar and a bat — in his office Oct. 18.
and kicking in the Nature Lab and Bugtopia, too, though safely behind glass.
Indicating one of tarantulas in Bugtopia as he strides by, Bovard, 69, is a walking, talking encyclopedia of the museum.
He knows everything about every diorama, and points out extraordinary details you would miss on first viewing: birds, insects or other animals that are included alongside the main feature, and that make them all become rather like a “Where's Waldo?” exercise. He even reveals some tricks of the trade: a small hidden mirror, placed so it reflects light onto a lowland gorilla face that would normally be too dark to distinguish the eyes.
Back in his cramped workshop, it is hard to not to be wide-eyed at the dozens of animal plaster death masks on the walls.
“This one was made in the 1920s,” says Bovard, pointing to a huge brown death mask of a Steller sea lion bull, the mount of which is still on display in the North American Mammal hall.
Many of the animals on exhibit were first mounted 30, 40, 50 or even 60 years ago, and it is thanks to the sculpture, art and science skills of Bovard, his many volunteers and other specialist taxidermists that they have been maintained, and still look as real as they ever did.
Earlier, when he saw a coiled rattlesnake he had mounted, he noted: “I need to polish those eyes,” and explained that on field trips he is not worried about rattlers “because I kept snakes in my bedroom when I was young: I was a herp guy.”
Bovard disappears for a few minutes, then returns with a crouching black panther on his shoulder. A female originally from Asia, it came from actress Tippi Hedren's Shambala sanctuary and had been suffering from cancer before it died.
“It needed some hair implants,” Bovard says and urges a more detailed look. Up close, you see that it is not exactly a pure black cat; its fur is mottled and spotted, and has twists and curls — just like all cats' (and people's) hair does.
The chaotic workshop is strewn with random taxidermied animals, mainly birds of all colors and sizes, but there are also measurement blueprints, the pale-yellow forms that are sculpted to create the mannequin over which skins will be put; a wolf skin in a sealed plastic bag; and another Halloween horror for many: a white pallid bat with big ears, his wings spread wide.
“We have two or three volunteers a couple of days a week,” explains Bovard, noting that they have added around 200 items to the dioramas since 2020 alone, and that he had a cold storage unit filled with skins, some of which also go back decades.
All are waiting for their moment to shine, and Bovard says proudly that the museum has 75 dioramas and has used the iconic exhibits for all its 100 years. It is also the only museum in North America that wants more, with several new dioramas planned for the 60,000-square-foot wing opening on the second floor next September.