00:00My name's Jason, I'm a crustacean taxidermist.
00:03When people hear what I do, they tend to do a double take.
00:06I've had a lot of pet commissions from people who have lost their pets and didn't know that
00:13it was an option to have them preserved.
00:15My most prominent pet memorial project has been Ludo.
00:20He's a peacock mantis shrimp.
00:22Ludo's owner reached out to me a little while after Ludo passed away.
00:26I'd never worked on mantis shrimp at the time so it has been a bit of a learning curve.
00:34Working on Ludo was nerve-wracking because for the most part I'm working on crabs that
00:40I find at the beach and if something goes wrong I can replace parts, I can find another crab
00:46if it goes completely wrong but Ludo was one of one so everything had to be absolutely
00:54perfect.
00:54So the next and final part of the process is going to be bringing back Ludo's natural
01:00colouration.
01:01It was never my plan to become a crab taxidermist.
01:05When I stumbled into this work I was a freelance web designer.
01:09I was looking for something else to do but didn't expect it to be this.
01:13It really was just something that I stumbled into.
01:16I'd say what I love most about this work is that I'm always learning something new.
01:22I'm always learning something new.
01:22I'm always learning something new.
01:23I'm always learning something new.
