The Always Exciting World of Small Animal TaxidermyFollow

So my brother and I were discussing potential Chrimbus gifts via email the other day and he dropped an interesting tidbit. His fiance would like some taxidermy/ied/i/ed(?!?) mice. The goal of course is to dress them into "adorable little costumes" and place them in places where they can be shown off. I was given the additional directive that these can be found on Etsy (of fucking course). After being presented with various price points from the $40-$100 price range, a light bulb went off. It can't be too difficult to do this myself, can it?

After a bit of searching, I found an interesting guide that seems to set out a process that even the most surgically/crafty inept can follow and successfully end up with a growing horde of creepy little creatures that will stare into your soul for hours after you should have fallen asleep.

Warning, this is not for the squeamish.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Mouse-Taxidermy/?ALLSTEPS

Now I have dissected things in school previously. We did the cows eye in fifth grade, all the usual biology subjects in high school: frogs and little pigs that I can recall (I was skipping a lot in high school and enclosed in a haze of marijuana smoke). I took a zoology class at our local technical college and we dissected cats. It wasn't the most pleasant thing ever, but I remember being turned off more by the constant odorous assault of formaldehyde more than anything. This wouldn't be an issue since I would be using frozen for food dead mice as my subjects.

Does anyone have experience with anything like this? I'm a fairly large individual which means I have very large hands. I'm afraid that if I invest the money in all the needed supplies, including the dead mice from a pet shop, it would be a waste. Some of this process such as the parts with the scraping and the tail seem like I don't have the correct hands.

For your tasteful viewing pleasure:







Whatcha think folks, just drop the money on some artbag on Etsy or make a go of it?

One of my coworkers used to do some taxidermy. He always said the smaller the animal, the harder it is to work with. Told a story about a squirrel once and said it was the biggest pain in the ***. If you're gonna try it yourself, get a few spares to practice on.

Dependent on grades, a few people were to be allowed to attend a human cadaver dissection as a field trip down on the University Wisconsin-Madison at I believe the medical school for an advanced science class in my junior year. It certainly grabbed my attention and sounded interesting at the time but that was the year I was not particularly a model student. I still graduated on time but from an alternative school. Like our 8th grade trip to Washington D.C., it's something I regret missing out on. Boohoo, first world problems etc.

At first I felt sorry for these dead mice, then I realized that getting your guts pulled out and put on a human's shelf in little outfits is probably a kinder fate than getting consumed and then pooped out by a snake.

My only concern with the book would be whether he touched it between touching one of those damn rats and washing his hands.

Maybe a nice book on taxidermy, or about that and other creepy Victorian holdovers. And good luck to your brother.

See now the problem with that is he has to consider where he's going to store his taxidermied brother once she's in prison for having presumably gutted and taxidermied said brother though. Thats not the klind of thing you can just put in a storage unit and the rates on those climate controlled ones awre just hideous.

Get her a gift card to Etsy.

If you want to add a personal touch, bake some cute mouse cookies to add to the package. You can't ever go wrong with cookies. These look really good (and cute!).



Edited, Nov 25th 2012 3:11pm by Elinda

Complete with a little Lincoln Log log cabin.

This board constantly surprises and delights me