Take a Taxidermy Class

This one ended up being a two-fer! I got to try two different types of taxidermy: wet specimen and dry specimen. Though this was not a happy thing for me, to be fully transparent. I have a soft spot for animals and creatures of all sorts (the only thing I don’t really care for are roaches and mosquitos – the rest are cool with me). I was in Chicago in September 2022 and was browsing for things to do while I was there. I saw there was a wet specimen taxidermy class at The Insect Asylum taking place the next day, so I immediately signed up to preserve an opossum.

The process to create the specimens is fairly straightforward – you inject a formaldehyde mixture into many spots and then put it into a jar. I felt so sad the entire time and kept apologizing to my opossum. We were assured they were ethically sourced, but it still bummed me out.

The second taxidermy class I took was at the Tampa Oddities Show – the specimen we would be creating was going to be a two headed duck. To say I was bad at it is an understatement. I did not do well with this at all. It wasn’t as sad as the opossum, but I still felt bad for the ducklings we were stuffing. My duck is truly at a hot mess, which is fine with me, lol.

I will say that when I originally added this to my list, my intention was to taxidermy a larger creature such as a racoon, but I don’t think my heart would have been able to take it. I still feel kind of weird about displaying these because of those mixed feelings.