00:10I really like to work on baby animals because for the most part all the baby
00:16animals in my freezer were either stillborn or they were born and died
00:20within a week. The method of my madness or what drives me to do what I do is the
00:27desire to give new life to an animal that never had a chance to live their life
00:34fully. My name is Miki Alice-Kwapis and I'm a professional taxidermist.
00:51It is early morning and we are in Chicago's up-and-coming Humboldt Park area.
00:58Are you familiar with taxidermy? Yes. And when I say that word to you what picture
01:04do you conjure up in your head? Either an old man with glasses and a beard working
01:09some shop somewhere in the Midwest or someone who works at a museum.
01:16The things I know about taxidermy is stuffed animals. You scoop out the insides with an
01:22ice cream scoop and you shove it with cotton wool, you sew it up, Bob's your uncle. Pheasant
01:27forever and ever I meant. I think.
01:31We're about to go and meet Miki is a taxidermist. She's very passionate about the ethical practices
01:37in taxidermy. Do I know what that is? No, not really but hopefully I will because I'm gonna
01:42do a class that involves me, for lack of a better expression, pimping out a rat.
01:48Hi. Hi, Miki. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Hello.
01:54How are you? Thanks for inviting me into your house. Oh, absolutely. I travel all over the
01:59world to teach taxidermy classes and what that typically entails is providing my students with
02:06a specimen. They learn how to skin it and they make a form for the inside. So today everyone
02:12is going to learn how to taxidermy a baby rat. You want to flip it around so that the butt
02:17is facing away from you and yours, see how it's really flat? You want to squish it so that
02:22it's like this. And you want to spread the legs out. I think that in many aspects taxidermy
02:29is very similar to tattooing where you have a very male dominated industry with a lot of
02:36old school guys who have been perfecting their trade secrets for generations and it's sort
02:42of passed on from mentor to mentee. If any of the legs break or fall off or whatever, don't
02:48worry about it. It's just an effect of the dry ice that they were kept on when they were
02:51shipped to me. And if it's a male, all you do is pull the penis out through the penis sheath
02:59backwards and it'll pop right out. Everyone kind of has their tips and tricks. There are
03:03lots of things that I'll share with my students to get them acclimated with the basics and then
03:09they can go home and they can perfect their techniques and they can teach themselves their own
03:12tricks. The number one goal for the skinning process is to make sure that you don't hit
03:17the intestines because it gets just really gross and really messy. One of my earliest memories
03:24growing up in Michigan was being dropped off at my grandpa's house and I would go down into
03:30the basement and on the wall of the workshop was this taxidermy bear. And for some reason
03:34its tongue was really loose and because it was loose, I thought it was a great idea to take
03:39it out and play with it. This bear, whose name is Fuzzy Wuzzy, was hunted in 1972. My grandfather
03:48had it butchered and that's all that my family ate for a whole winter. And my dad said that
03:54it didn't taste great but that's fine. I didn't really receive any formal training. I didn't go to
04:05taxidermy school but you get a lot of different perspective from different taxidermists depending
04:10on who's teaching what. Wow.
04:22My name is Edward E. Leap, a descendant of Edward A. Leap, my father. And then I have a son
04:32full-time
04:33in the business with me and he's back to an Edward A. Leap.
04:42What were you expecting? This. You were. I see dead animals. Hello. Hi girls. Are you the owner?
04:51Can I help you? Hi. Happy to meet you. Michelle. Nice to meet you. Hi. Happy to meet you.
04:55Mickey's a taxidermist. Yes. Do you need a job? I got lots of work. Sure. I got lots and lots
05:03of work.
05:03Honestly, I'm considering it after seeing all the work that you have out on the floor. It's
05:08absolutely beautiful.
05:14When I work in studio with one of my colleagues, Chuck, I use the same techniques and the same
05:21methods and the same materials that he does. And those methods and techniques and materials
05:26are ones that have been passed on from generation to generation.
05:30Well, this is the flesh side, but that was a 60-pound. That's a big beaver.
05:34That's a big beaver. Yeah. He's roughing out coons here. Everything has got to get skinned
05:40and worked down. So, Chuck learned from our friend Mike Frazier. And Mike Frazier learned
05:48a lot from Joe Kish. And Joe Kish learned a lot from the Jonas Brothers. And they're not the
05:53same Jonas Brothers that you're thinking of. And then the Jonas Brothers worked with Carl
05:58Akeley. And Carl Akeley is known as the father of the modern taxidermy industry.
06:03Since you're a budding taxidermist, we've got work here. We can have you jump on and skin a
06:09squirrel or in the tumbler. Sure.
06:18When you create a memory, you have a story that goes along with it. And so, when you look
06:23at something that holds a memory for you, you remember the story that goes along with
06:27it. And so, with taxidermy, everyone, you know, everyone remembers their first time.
06:36I've been to Mexico a couple of times and one of the things I was after was a cinnamon
06:42teal. I can't tell you so much about my first night on my honeymoon. But I can tell you everything,
06:51everything, without fail, about that duck. I can tell you exactly who I was hunting with.
06:56I can tell you how the day started. Then I can tell you that we went to this lake and
07:01we
07:01stood in this rickety blind. And that particular year it was so cold. Now, with that said, with
07:09that said, it's the same thing with these guys with these trophies.
07:16I was working in undergrad and one of my coworkers asked me one night if I would like to help
07:22her with a class project. And I wound up at her house with a dead squirrel and a bottle
07:27of wine on her kitchen table. And that's kind of where it all began. We used her old biology
07:33textbook and she taught me how to skin this roadkill squirrel. I just became extremely interested
07:40in the idea that you could take something completely dead and lifeless with like blood coming out
07:48of its face and remove everything inside of it and just be left with the shell of this animal
07:54and make it look alive again. And it's kind of magical. It's the closest thing to performing
08:00magic that I think I'll ever come in my life.
08:05I did a recreation of the creation of man from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with raccoons.
08:13And we've also done the Rodan statue of the thinker with the coons.
08:16What's like one of the funniest ones that stick out in your mind?
08:20Probably those raccoons right over there.
08:25Oh! In the act of mating.
08:27Yeah, I don't know. Yeah.
08:33Certainly beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One of the neat things about taxidermy is that
08:37it doesn't have to just be the trophy deer on the wall. This can be something that reflects you
08:43and reflects your values and the ways that you interact with the natural world.
08:47My name is Steve Sullivan. I'm the curator of urban ecology for the Chicago Academy of Sciences
08:52and its Peggy Notobart Nature Museum.
09:00Taxidermy combines craft skills, artistic skills, science skills.
09:04Most important to me about taxidermy are the scientific specimens that we create.
09:09So here we have part of our ornithology collection.
09:12And they're stored in kind of tight little cabinets to keep the bugs away.
09:19But here you can see a series of beautiful skimmers.
09:25These specimens are empirical pieces of data that record the present.
09:31And they contain information that we don't even understand today that people of the future will discover.
09:38We're very grateful for the taxidermist who in this case, in 1896, preserved this individual.
09:45Because by 1914, not a single one of these animals existed on the face of the earth ever again.
09:58We also teach taxidermy classes here at the Nature Museum.
10:02The students that take my class span literally every kind of conceivable lifestyle and aesthetic themselves.
10:09And that's one of the real joys about teaching these classes is we'll start off with a dozen pigeons in
10:15the middle of the room.
10:15And when we leave, we will have such a diversity of ideas and poses reflected in these pigeons.
10:24I would say that the demographics in my class are approximately 95% women.
10:29Which is very interesting to me because traditionally the taxidermy industry has totally been a boys club.
10:36And it's very inspiring to see women of all ages taking my classes and learning these processes.
10:42And they're really into it and they want to further their career as taxidermists.
10:47Good.
10:49That's how I feel.
10:51And you can always train those after it's more dry.
10:54I'm the HR manager for a fashion company.
10:57And I think it's important to always have a hobby.
11:00And I've always been really into science and natural history and stuff.
11:04Taxidermy just seemed like something I wanted to try next.
11:18So I just completed my first and last taxidermy class.
11:25I came up with this little guy.
11:28I haven't given him a name yet, but I think you'll appreciate the chest hair, the goatee and the fro.
11:34Which came from my head, just in case you were wondering.
11:41This is, clearly it's in fashion again.
11:45And I suppose that's the appeal.
11:46Is to not only have some taxidermy in your house, but to have said, I made that.
11:54It's so cute.
11:55Is this it?
11:56Yeah.
11:57I love her so much.
11:59Someone tells me that what I do is gross or disgusting or that I, quote, murder kittens.
12:06Not true.
12:07So, yes, I have dead kittens in my freezer.
12:10Because I took in a pregnant cat and she had been infected with a very deadly virus while she was
12:18waiting in the shelter for someone to come and rescue her.
12:20So, yeah, it's sad that I have these kittens that passed away and I fed them once an hour for
12:28ten days.
12:28And I held every single one of them as they died in my hands.
12:32And it's really hard to deal with.
12:36And I get really emotional about it.
12:38But without understanding the context behind something, you just, you don't get it.
12:47So, let's get one more of them.
12:51So, let's take a look.
13:00So, I'm going to try it.
