Taxidermy Today

Speaker 8: So today on Back Story, in honor of Thanksgiving. We’re looking at the strange history of stuffing things.

Brian: I’ll be finding out about the confederate horse that still looks as if he’s ready to go into battle a century and a half after his death.

Nathan: We’ll be taking a close look at the Raven, which inspired Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.

Ed: And discovering how Carl Akeley’s dioramas captured some of the mightiest animals in the world and froze them for posterity.

Paul Rhymer: So this is death mask of a [inaudible 00:09:30] zebra. And I made that mold for zebras that were down at the mammal hall at the Natural History Museum. So I got the; had the head and then I just made a mold. Did a [inaudible 00:09:44] then cast it and bought a body filler.

Brian: Meet Paul Rhymer. He served as a Smithsonian taxidermist for 25 years. And helped lead the renovation of their mammal hall in the early 2000s. We visited Rhymer to discuss the state of taxidermy today and got a tour of his studio to see how he works.

Paul Rhymer: So yes, that was an actual; an un skinned head of a zebra. And so I made the mold, just so when I was mounting it, I could get like that sort of shape and just sort of like some certain kinds of measurements. It was a little distorted cause all this is really soft tissue. But this mold gives me a ton of information.
Some really important measurements are you know like where the measurement of the nostril in relation to the mouth. How far back does the corner of the mouth, what is the corner of the eye to the nose measurements. And then you start figuring out like this is the zygomatic arch which is that bone that comes around like that on a skull, you’ve seen that. Like where is that shape?
You know where is the shape of the jaw, you know where the jaw comes down in that muscle and you can see the tendons that come through here. And you have the scope all that stuff into the form so that when you put the skin over it, it looks like a zebra.

Brian: We met Paul after he got back from his morning duck hunt. He explains that for him, hunting is more about the pursuit than the kill. And taxidermy is more about the memory than the trophy.

Paul Rhymer: You know like this, my friend who is a taxidermist right up the road here. Like five miles. He sent me a text of this deer that he’s been trying to get for three and a half years. And you know, he’s, “I missed it two years ago.” And he showed me all these photographs of like … as he’s been … cause they’ve got like trail cameras and stuff and you can see it every year getting bigger and bigger. And he got it yesterday with a bow, which is badass. And it’s a huge deer.
So for him, that’s what that’s gonna mean. He’s really happy that it’s big, and that’s you know first thing that he’s gonna say. Look how big it is. But back in his mind, he’s also realizing that took him three and a half years to get that deer. That’s a journey, and that’s what life is all about for me. You know it’s like, I love to get to the place. But the journey is the part that you remember.

Brian: Paul wears many hats in the taxidermy world. From working at the Smithsonian, to going out on a hunt. To meeting rogue artist taxidermist. Taxidermy allows him to straddle different worlds that are now starting to overlap and come together.

Paul Rhymer: A lot of my friends are traditional taxidermist that mount stuff for sportsmen, deer heads and stuff that people go and hunt. But then I also have this profession as a museum taxidermist where you know like I did stuff that none of those guys … I’ve mounted more than one gorilla. Most guys don’t [inaudible 00:12:30] well you can’t say that. So I mean it’s just … like that’s not something that comes into a taxidermy shop because no one goes to Africa to shoot a gorilla and have it brought for their trophy room.
But I’ve done these weird things as a museum taxidermist. So that’s another kind of foot in the world and then as an artist, seeing people who are using taxidermy in a completely different way. So taxidermist, like the good old boys that I know and love they do taxidermy and want it to be art. And then there are artists that are using taxidermy as part of their art.
And for a long time, those communities didn’t really meet. But they really are meeting now. If I put on my “good ol’ boy” hat I would say that the real taxidermists don’t really have the really refined skills. They don’t really pay attention to anatomy. Their not technically good taxidermists, so things look really rough. But they don’t really care because they’re trying to create this idea and using you know a stuffed squirrel is a metaphor for something else you know. And so a lot of traditional taxidermists kind of look down on that because they didn’t really know the trade.
Then the other artists are well you know, you care more about a nictitating membrane than an eye than you do about the life, or the idea, or the artistic idea of the piece. So now people, they’re starting to have more understanding and learning from each other, it’s really cool. Which means now there’s like women in taxidermy. And so you know it’s neat because some of them come in through the rogue community. Some of them doing it are just straight up really fine competition quality taxidermy. It’s neat.
It’s nice because it’s you know the world has got a lot of diversity in it. It’s nice to see the taxidermy community grow. Cause we can all learn from each other, it’s great.

Brian: Paul Rhymer has been an artist and a taxidermist since he was a kid. In fact, he learned the fact of taxidermy from his father.

Paul Rhymer: I remember the first duck that I got when I was eight and my dad mounted it, and I still have it up at the house. So that piece stands out for me, because I still have like two of the first pieces he ever did for me. But that duck especially. And then the first things that I did in the shop was and I don’t know if you’ve seen these in antique shops.
But back in the day, people would have like gun racks and they would be made out of deer feet or deer lamps? And they would be making that deer feet and so like I did that. I was doing that like when I was nine years old. And you never see that stuff around anymore, but you know it was like a thing you know? Like Rednecks had like deer foot gun racks.

Brian: Growing up Rhymer was most passionate about drawing and painting. He pursued a studio art degree in college. But when it came time to find a job, the Smithsonian was looking to hire a taxidermist. So he dusted off the skills he learned from his father, applied, got the gig and stayed there for the next 25 years.
At the Smithsonian, Rhymer found himself advocated for taxidermy’s utility and it’s relevance.

Paul Rhymer: But a lot of times I would be talking to a designer and they would say, “We’re gonna do a model of a seal and we’re gonna do this … ” well, why are you doing model? Let’s do taxidermy. “Well can we get a seal?” I’m like, pretty sure we can find a seal. You know they wash up dead all the time you know? Let’s talk to the guy over in the marine mammal section you know? And we can find one of those for you. It’s like, “Oh, so we can do taxidermy?”
Yeah, don’t you think that’ll look more real than like a plastic one that we would sculpt and cast in fiber glass? “Oh, yeah.” And so you had to educate designers and project managers you know? And writers that this was an actual option.

Brian: Paul Rhymer helped oversee the renovation of the mammal hall in early 2000s. It was a project he says that worried some museum publicists initially. But received only rave reviews in the end. He thinks that’s partly because museum dioramas are a singular experience.

Paul Rhymer: It’s a real thing, it’s the real thing. You can see; I mean you’re right with the internet you can see the most amazing footage of animals. I mean every day I see something that just blows my mind. But it’s something that’s on a screen you know? And there’s something that still; still something that’s really attractive to the physical, tactile, real thing in front of you.
And I think that’s something that taxidermy can offer whatever the scenario is in a museum context; that’s what that offers. That a graphic can’t offer, that a video can’t offer, it’s the thing. And people dig that.

Brian: Paul opens up his large chest freezer, rummages past other animals, shows us an owl head that he was working on until he finds a subject of his next taxidermy piece. A rare condor vulture.

Paul Rhymer: This will stink, even though it’s frozen. This bird has I think the longest wingspan of any bird in North America. Like a 10 foot wingspan. Once again, this bird’s been necropsied. So after the bird died, they cut it from all the way down and they took out all the; they took most of the internal organs out.
So what I’ll do is, I’ll make molds of these feet so that I can do casts, and so then that material can go into the museum research collection. Same thing with the head.

Brian: As Rhymer tells us more about his next taxidermy project, he explains that he’s taking extra steps to make sure the bird’s skeleton can benefit science.

Paul Rhymer: I mean, when I was a kid there were like 50 left in the world. So I remember when that thing was almost extinct and they’ve done this breeding program, they’ve really come back. They’re doing really well, but they’re still highly endangered. So this one is a known animal that had been raised in captivity and released into the wild. So they know this animal really well, I mean it’s really old. And it died probably of old age, and so I’m gonna mount it.
So I said to him, to the guy at Fish and Wildlife. I said, what are you doing with the rest of the material that we don’t use? Like all the skeletal material? He goes, “Well, we’re not gonna use it.” Then I said, do you mind? Can we give it to the Smithsonian because I can use really very few bones. We can give that skeletal material, I can cast the feet, I can cast the head and then all that stuff can go into the research collection. He’s like, why would you throw that material away? And so they’re gonna have it. So like that’s really hard material to come by and it doesn’t benefit me, it’s actually a hassle because I gotta kind of do some extra stuff. But why would you do that?

Brian: He’s not totally surprised that people are skeptical of his conservationist impulse, but he insists that it is a core value of his.

Paul Rhymer: Well I mean hunters like to talk about how you know the first conservationists were hunters. And you know some people buy that argument, and some people don’t. I do obviously. And so sometimes it’s hard for people to understand that you could actually go out an shoot and kill and animal and still love and revere it.
And that is a paradox for sure. But for me and my buddies, that is not a paradox. That is how we are, you know like we respect the animal; even though we hunt that animal. And so to me, you know being able to use that resource in as big a way as you can it just seems natural to me.

Brian: Taxidermy’s full of contradictions, and Paul Rhymer; the artist, hunter and taxidermist knows it all too well.