This fellow has been in the works for a while now, his name is Mulligan:
Back in November a friend's father called us and asked if we'd be interested in picking up the body of a pest
skunk he was attempting to capture and cull. The unsuspecting creature had been living under this elderly couple's porch and uprooting their gardens. My boyfriend and I excitedly agreed to retrieve the kill, innocently wondering
"How much will it smell?"
Theoretically it is possible to take down a skunk without triggering it to spray by means of a carefully placed .22 to the brain. And I would love to say that that's exactly what happened to this chap, but we arrived on scene to find the poor beast had been shot in the lower jaw, triggering an awful, yet karmic blast of skunk anal juice.
Lovely. My Love then delivered the killing shot, and we were left with no good options. 99% of people in this situation would probably have tossed the body anywhere remotely feasible, but by that point I just couldn't accept the idea of throwing out the skunk carcass. First of all, the pelt itself was lush, thick and healthy -- despite the oder. That, and I just found the little beastie to be so amazingly cute! Thus, with little time to deliberate, we put the reeking body in the back of our pickup and returned home with our.... prize.
Once at home I set up outback --in the farthest corner of the yard-- with a small table and my least favorite/easiest to part with scalpel, knife, and clothes. I donned rubber gloves, an N95 mask, and a face shield. Being that close to fresh skunk spray was something like being in a cloud of rancid onions and spilled gasoline. It was just so awful, I had to take frequent breaks because I kept getting light headed. Breaking out the camera for close up shots was absolutely out of the question. However, I was still determined not to waste the animal's pelt no matter how awful the task of skinning it would be. Even if it couldn't be mounted, the hide could at least be chemically tanned and displayed in the backyard somewhere.
While I was setting up outside, my boyfriend was inside doing some quick internet research on skunk anal gland removal. Thanks to him, YouTube, and
this excellent, magical video I was able to learn how to removed the other anal gland without rupturing it (they generally let loose one at a time), but it still took me nearly two hours to work the stinking, extreamly greasy skin off the animal. After a while I was simply too nauseated to detail out the feet, remove the toes bones, and scrape the thick layer of blubber off the inside of the skin, so I bagged it up and put it in our small "to be taxidermied" chest freezer. Unfortunately, with the exceptionally strong New England winter coming on, I was forced to put all my large, messy, "out doors" taxidermy projects on hold for the season. So I carefully placed the triple-bagged and inside-out skunk skin on the top of my To Do pile and slowly closed the freezer door. I felt vaguely uneasy about the whole situation....
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| Umm.....yeah.... |
All seemed well until mid December, when I ventured down to that corner of the basement and whereupon I noticed a particular funk in the air. The skunk's smell was penetrating
through the freezer and possibly through
everything else that was individually labeled and bagged in that freezer! Panicking, I took the bagged skunk skin out of the freezer and ran out side with it, tossing it in a melting pile of snow and ice on the corner of our deck. It was about 8 o'clock on a Saturday night and there was nothing that could be done besides throwing the skin in the trash, but I was still determined not to let that happen.
The next day I woke up early, got my supplies together, and proceeded out back to continue fleshing the skunk skin. My boyfriend and I assembled a crude fleshing station out of a series of PVC pipes of various sizes and, mask and all, I went back at it. Much time was spent skinning the paws and each individual toe, except the last toe joint (containing the claw) which is left attached to the skin. After a few hours I was satisfied with the job and continued on to the next steps.
The skin was then soaked in a solution of water and "De-greaser" for about an hour. The degreasing agent is something like a heavy duty shampoo that cleans a lot of the natural oils out of the skin and fur. After the first 1/2 hour I had to change the solution because the particularly oily skunk skin turned the first batch a sickly yellow-green color.
The next step was to soak the hide in an acidic pickling solution over night. The next day I took the skin out of the pickling bucket, drained it briefly, and repeated the fleshing, scraping, and picking process over again. In the near future I'm going to invest in a handheld mechanical fleshing blade, because an ordinary skinning knife at this stage is very time consuming. However, proper removal of the flesh and fat from the internal side of the skin is needed to allow the actual
tanning chemicals to be absorbed during the next step in the process.
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| His cute little forepaw! |
After the final pickling, the skin was neutralized in a sodium bicarbonate and water solution and then coated in the syrupy tanning agent. The product I use contains formalin and must be used outside, while wearing a mask, and with common sense & safety in mind. Just enough of the product is brushed onto the skin so that it is completely absorbed in 4-5 hours. During this time the flesh side of the pelt turns very light in color and is starting to finally look like actual leather.
I rinsed the skin in water one final time and began to turn it right side out. With great care I reversed the stubby legs and instantly fell in love with his cute little claws. I excitedly turned the rest of the skin, something like a soaking wet towel that
still smelled like skunk. The face popped out and looked fantastic. After all that practice on squirrels, I was able to flesh off his eyelids, ears, and nose with relative ease. However his lower jaw (where he'd first been shot) looked shrunken up and mutilated. Something would have to be done to mitigate the appearance of that. But overall, the skunk hide was beautiful, thick and shiny. The project was going to look great, even if the smell of skunk was still.... fairly evident. The pickling & tanning process hadn't removed the skunk's oder as much as we had hoped. At this point we were kind of stuck, and so "Mr. Stinky" was hung in the farthest corner of the tool shed to dry out.
A fortnight passed and the skunk skin dried and contorted. I checked on it regularly and shaped the face, nose, and claws repeatedly during the process to keep them in decent shape for whatever the final piece was going to be. Cartilage and tendon do not rehydrate very well, and past experience has taught me to get the general shape of the ears, lip line, eye openings, and any remaining toe bones right "the first time" before any initial drying out of the skin.
We figured that drying the pelt out would help the scent dissipate, and we were right... until the day came when I decided to rehydrate the little fella and finally turn him into
something. After only half an hour of rehydration in a bucket of briny water, that familiar fragrance returned to the air. Fortunately the odor was relatively mild this time, like what you might whiff during an after dark neighborhood jaunt in spring. It wouldn't have been that big a deal if only I'd been working outside, but I had set up in the basement to avoid the January elements. Never-the-less I was determined to create something out of the skin over the course of that day.
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| His felt jaw is drying. |
My boyfriend initially requested something wearable, presumably a hat or scarf. But it was clear at this point that we simply couldn't make the skin into anything that anyone would want to wear on themselves; anywhere, anytime, ever. He was a bit dsissapointed, but I was getting excited because I really wanted to try to make the skin into a soft mount. I've always wanted a pet skunk and this would be the next best thing! Soft mounts -also known as "plushie" taxidermy- are a modern take on the old, crude methods of preserving animal skins and literally stuffing them with scraps and rags, in general while paying no attention to anatomy or final appearance of the hide. Today soft mounts are made by using the head-only mannikins that are used to make animal rugs, while filling the rest of the body with a light wire frame and synthetic teddy bear stuffing. Like traditional taxidermy, there is a wide variety in the quality of soft mounts available for sale. If you're interested soft taxidermy of unparalleled artistic skill, visit
Urban Nature Taxidermy Studio.
Anyway, I set out to stuff our new pet skunk. Given the critter's short legs and overall simple, tube shaped body, mounting it was a fairly quick and simple process:
1. Each toe tip was filled with a tiny portion of air drying clay. Next the limbs were packed rather tightly with
poly stuffing. I nixed the idea of crafting a wire frame due to the over all stumpy shape of the beastie.
2. I sculpted the shape is his head and snout as the leather dried (no one manufactures skunk head mannikins), taking a hair dryer to it very briefly to speed up the process. Then I glued his 8mm glass bubble eyes into place.
3. Next I began to add stuffing to the neck, being careful not to give him a stretched out appearance. The rest of the body followed, though I decided to leave little gaps of no stuffing at the junctures of his limbs and body. This left his arms and legs delightfully dangly.
4. I continued to add small handfulls of stuffing until he seemed to be the "right" amount of stuffed - not too hard, not too floppy. I sewed his case incision back together - that's ventrally, between his hind legs and across his butt. The tail was left unstuffed and unwired to give him a mellow, pet-like personality.
5. Finally I patched up his chin and made him a very simplistic lower jaw out of black felt. Now at long last, our skunk had been given a second chance at.... life!
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| Need to take some better pics when the nice weather gets here! |
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| Mr. Stinky aka Mulligan |
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| thanks for reading! |
