- I'm Allis Markham, this is Prey,
my taxidermy studio in downtown Los Angeles.
Everything I work on dies of natural causes.
I love animals and I love making them last forever.
So today, we're going to teach vegans
how to mount ducklings as taxidermy.
Vegans Try Taxidermy
- I'm Sigi, I've been vegan since moving
to L.A. about five years ago.
- I'm Nick, I've been vegetarian for about 10 years
and vegan for six months.
- My name's Morgan and I've been vegan
for about a year and a half.
- I'm very nervous.
- Pretty nervous.
- I'm feeling embarrassed at how nervous I am.
- It's just kind of creepy.
- I'm imagining the worst possible scenarios in here.
Oh, man, it's uncomfortable (laughs).
- Bag of ducklings.
These are going to be your specimens.
Alright.
So we're going to take this in three parts today.
First, we're going to be kind of
deconstructing our ducklings.
We're going to be taking them apart, skinning them.
Then, we're going to be cleaning that skin,
so it's not attractive to like pests and things.
And then we're essentially going to be
putting them back together
to look like little cute ducklings.
Deconstructing
Warning: this part is graphic
So do you want to watch me make my first incision
and then I'm going to ask you to make yours.
I start at the top of the chest
and this scalpel is super sharp,
so I can just go real lightly.
- I just realized, I'm going to take
off my watch for this.
- Okay.
Just slide it down.
Perfect.
- This is so insane.
- I got a little bit light headed for a second.
- [Allis] Well, just remember, it can't get much worse
because they're already dead.
- Apparently I'm good at this
which is a little bit frightening but I guess you never know
what your talents are until you try them.
- [Allis] Well, the good news is we're
about to cut the bodies off.
The bad news is we're not quite done with them.
I'm gonna have you go ahead and snip the neck
right about there off.
- I don't know if I can watch this.
One, two, three.
(group groans)
- How do you remove some things,
innards from its neck in a respectable way,
like in a respectable way?
So that I'm not... (laughs).
- [Allis] I don't know, maybe just cross yourself,
I'm not sure.
- No, Jesus doesn't need to come into this.
- Mmm, oh, weird, oh, man, that felt weird inside of me.
- Go big or go home.
- [Allis] That was good, good job, you guys.
- I'm definitely glad that I know what the insides
of the bird looks like, what the anatomy looks like.
I feel wiser.
Even if I don't feel happy.
Cleaning
- So we're going to be cleaning them a little more.
You guys each have wire brushes
and there's like a big end and a small end.
We're probably going to use the small end.
- Do you ever like pick up road kill and just bring it in...
- Only for the museum.
- I'm about to remove the eyeball from the bird
which I've been told resembles a blueberry.
- Right now, we're tossing the eyeballs
and scrap bits of flesh in the meat bag.
- They're gonna become little birds in here again.
I'm gonna have you get them under the water
and we're gonna turn those skulls right side out.
Pop it right through, nice and slow.
It kinda becomes a little duckling again.
- [Sigi] Wow.
- [Allis] Now we're gonna take our soap
with our picture of the little duckling on it.
And we're gonna suds these guys up.
Do you wanna suds yours up?
- [Sigi] Yup.
- [Allis] Get it all over on the inside and on the outside,
nice and suds.
- [Sigi] So weird.
Reconstructing
- What we're gonna do now is the fill the head
and the eye orbits with clay.
So I just pop it in there and I pull it kinda flush.
- Have a sip of coffee really quickly.
- Yeah (laughs).
- While I stuff my eyeballs.
- See how there's wires coming out
of the bottom of the legs?
They go up into the little bodies we're gonna put in.
First, we're just gonna run wires
up through the bottom of the feet
and we're gonna go just along our bones, okay?
So we're just gonna loosely tying it to there, okay?
- I feel like I'm...
a little desensitized, there's also no more blood
and guts and gore and I still have no idea
how it's gonna end up being any thing because it looks
like this right now.
- So me and Madison are gonna put in your bodies
and wire them and we're gonna start sewing.
Name of the game's is just not getting feathers stuck
in our stitches and again, just delicate, delicate, delicate
and it doesn't need to be tight.
Alright, so we're gonna fluff your bird.
This dust is called chinchilla dust, your chinchilla fluff.
Basically, it's gonna help us fluff out our little duckling
and make him look happy again.
- [Sigi] Oh, it's getting fluffier.
- We're gonna turn on the blow dryer
and this is like where the magic happens.
- Awesome, so let's get his little head right way around
and we're gonna get him on here.
- Here is my completed bird.
- It looks much happier than he did an hour ago.
- I was really freaked out when I first got here
and when we started doing this but I'm surprised
at how the day kinda progressed.
- It was really, very educational and actually
more fun than I thought it was gonna be.
- I liked the appreciation that I got
for life for doing this.
It was a very surprisingly intimate experience.
I think it's kinda interesting and educational
and I'm not sure that veganism and taxidermy
are kind of mutually exclusive.
- I think a lot of the conversation today was about how,
there's a way, you know, to treat animals really well.
- It's nice to see something that had died
suddenly kinda reanimated.
- I started using the word cute to describe this
which I didn't think was going to be the case.
- Now I can say, maybe I'm vegan approved?
Maybe not?
I don't know (laughs).