Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit Part 6

All small animals are made up about the same as birds, wrapping the leg bones in tow, oak.u.m or cotton and filling out the body with the same material. The skull cleaned and poisoned had best be put in the centre of the body with the filling, when it can be found at any time by ripping a few of the st.i.tches.

The skin of the head is filled out with the same material and the tail may either be bent up under the body or drawn together by a few st.i.tches around a wrapped wire extending into the body half its length. Of course the operator will see that the entire inner surface of the skin is treated liberally with some preservative, a.r.s.enical paste preferably, before the filling process.

After st.i.tching up the opening cut the skin is laid on a board, back up and the legs neatly disposed, the front feet beside the head and the hind ones drawn back beside the tail. The feet are fastened with a pin each and after smoothing down the fur with a small metal fur comb the skin is laid aside in an airy, shady place until fully dry.

With each scientific skin a record should be made of the following details:

1. Length, end of nose to root of tail.

2. Length of tail from root to end of bone.

3. Height at shoulders.

4. Color of eyes, lips, feet, etc.

5. Name of species, s.e.x, locality, date, and collector's name.

These may be noted down on a corner of the outline sheet, which is numbered and filed away; the skin tagged with a duplicate number is put in the pickle jar or made up as a dried skin, whichever is desired, or the full information may be put on a tag attached to the skin. Many collectors simply number all specimens and preserve all information in their note books. The foregoing details are sufficient for animals less than bear and deer in size.

The larger animals should have as many as possible of the following additional measurements:

Distance hip joint to shoulder joint.

Circ.u.mference of forearm.

" " neck.

" " body.

Back of leg.

Weight if possible.

Skins of large animals, a bear for instance, may have a slight wrapping of tow or excelsior on the leg bones to prevent their coming in contact with the skin and the whole skin laid to dry on a scaffold of poles or something similar. When nearly dry fold up with the legs inside in a square shaped package. This can be tied up with heavy cord or even sewed up in burlap to prevent damaging the skin in transit. Fish and reptiles are not a success as dry skins.

CHAPTER VIII.

PREPARING DRY AND WET SKINS FOR MOUNTING.

Let us a.s.sume that we have a dry skin each of a small bird and a furred animal which has been properly made up sometime in the past and which it is necessary to mount. Taking the bird skin first, the usual way is to first wrap the unfeathered parts of legs in some strips of cotton cloth saturated with water containing a few drops of carbolic acid until they begin to relax or lose their stiffness somewhat.

Then the filling may be removed from the whole interior of the skin and be replaced with pieces of cotton, dampened as before, and the whole skin wrapped in a cloth or shut in a close box until with some sc.r.a.ping and manipulation it becomes as pliable as when first removed. Any little lumps of dried muscle should be broken up and the edges of the opening cut, sc.r.a.ped and stretched out as they are very apt to wrinkle and curl up, thus reducing the size of the skin considerably.

The eye sockets are to be filled with b.a.l.l.s of wet cotton to render the lids and surrounding skin soft. The roots of quills and tufts of large feathers will need loosening as some flesh is necessarily left around them.

The small animal skin may be treated the same way but the most thorough and expeditious method of relaxing skins of both animals and birds (except the smallest of the latter) is to plunge them into water, clear in cool weather, slightly carbolized in warm, until they are pretty well relaxed. Then go after the inner side with sc.r.a.per until any lumps of fat, muscle and the inner skin are well scratched up. Soak in benzine or gasoline and clean with hot meal, sand, sawdust or plaster as directed for tanning. Remember that bird skins must be handled carefully, so do not be too strenuous in beating and shaking them.

Of course if any skin has been laid away with quant.i.ties of fat adhering it will need very gingerly handling to save it, in fact unless _very_ rare such skins are not worth trying to save as they have little durability however treated. The largest polar bear skin I ever saw was ruined by lying "in the grease" too long before dressing. Bird skins preserved with the glycerine carbolic preparation require relaxing the legs and a cleaning and dampening up of the inside of the skins.

Furred skins from the pickle need a good sc.r.a.ping on their inner surface, thorough rinsing in soda solution to neutralize the acid and remove all salt, then the benzine bath and cleaning. Don't forget to rinse salted or pickled skins else beads of moisture will form on the specimen in damp weather and crystals of salt in dry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOOT SKINNED OUT.]

Occasionally an extra rare skin will drop to pieces through age or other infirmities when being prepared for mounting. The only hope for it then is to glue and pin it piecemeal on a manikin covered with some preparation which gives it a firm surface. While an expert will achieve fair results in such work the amateur could hardly expect success.

CHAPTER IX.

MOUNTING SMALL AND MEDIUM BIRDS.

A word of advice to the beginner as to the variety of specimen to use in first trials. Don't begin on too small a bird until somewhat adept; unpracticed fingers bungle sadly over tiny feathered bodies. A first subject should be at least as large as a bob white to give room to work, and of some variety in which the feathers are firmly embedded.

Snow birds, cardinals, and some others have very thin delicate skins, the pigeons shed their feathers on little or no provocation. Blackbirds and jays are very good to practice on but the very best would be a coot, sometimes called crow duck or mudhen. It is of fair size, closely covered with feathers which will fall in place readily after skinning and wiring even at the hands of a beginner.

Many, in fact most, birds have numerous bare patches which the adjacent feathered tracts cover perfectly while in the flesh, but which a too generous filling will exhibit in all their nakedness. I had not discovered this until some of my first attempts at mounting birds nonplussed me by showing numerous patches of bare skin in spite of the fact that but a few feathers had become loosened in the handling.

We will a.s.sume that a suitable specimen is at hand, freshly killed and properly skinned as per the directions already given. All bones remaining with the skin, lower leg, wing, skull, etc., have been stripped of flesh and any shreds remaining poisoned, as has the entire inner surface of skin. With the skinned body at hand cut three wires of suitable size, one a little more than twice the length of the body and neck, for the body wire, the other two about twice the length of the legs may be a size larger as it is important that the leg wires furnish adequate support.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLINCHING LEG WIRES IN ARTIFICIAL BODY OF BIRD]

Form the body wire into a loop which is the outline of the body laid on one side with the surplus end projecting along the line of the neck.

This loop should not be quite as large as the body, however, to allow for a thin layer of filling material over it. Wad up a handful of coa.r.s.e tow, push it inside the body loop and wind with coa.r.s.e thread, drawing in by pressure and winding and building out with flakes of tow to a rough shape of the skinned body. The neck also is built up the same way, making it fully as thick as the original but no longer ever.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WIRE LOOP FOR BIRD BODY.]

If the wire projects more than a couple of inches from this artificial neck, cut it off at that length and with a flat file or emery wheel give it a sharp triangular point. The leg wires, too, should be pointed similarly. All wire should be smooth, straight, and free from kinks to work well. Coming in coils it will require straightening, the larger sizes with mallet or hammer and No. 18 and smaller by fastening one end in the vise and giving the other a sharp tug with a pair of pliers. It will be felt to stretch slightly and become quite straight.

Next insert the pointed end of a leg wire in the bottom of the foot and pa.s.s it up along the back of the bone between it and the skin. A considerable knack is necessary to do this successfully and some force must be used. Pa.s.sing the heel joint is difficult but having done this and emerged inside the skin continue to pa.s.s it until it is a little longer than the leg bone beside it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WIRING LEG OF BIRD]

Turn the skin of leg inside out and wrapping tow around both bone and wire build up a duplicate of the leg from thigh to heel, wrapping snugly with thread. Treat the other leg the same.

With forceps fill the skull back of mouth with tow cut in short pieces.

A quant.i.ty of this may be chopped on the block with the hatchet and kept on hand in a box. Never fill any part of a mounted bird with cotton unless it may be the sockets as it is impossible to force a sharpened wire or pin through it.

The parts of the wing bones remaining should be wrapped with tow as the legs are, only they hardly need any wiring inside unless the bird is to be with wings spread. Fasten the ends of the wing bones together by a stout cord or thread so they are separated the distance between the shoulders, measuring across the back of body. Now insert the neck wire in the back of skull forcing it out through the crown until the artificial neck is brought snugly against the opening at the base of the skull.

Bend the pointed end over to get it out of the way and adjust the skin of the neck. Draw the skin of breast over the body keeping the bird on its back. If the body has been properly made it will fill the skin rather loosely. If too large it can be removed and made smaller before proceeding.

The operator will note that in all small and medium birds the thigh and the upper wing, next the shoulder are not built up and wired with the rest of the limbs but are filled out later from inside the skin, as in all ordinary positions they show but little externally, the elbow and knee joints nestling close to the body among the feathers.

So when fastening the legs to the body let the wires enter where the knee would lie and push the wire through obliquely, upward and forward, pushing and drawing them through the artificial and natural leg until the lower ends approach the feet. Grasping the sharpened ends of the leg wires at the middle of the length projecting from the body, with round nose pliers bend them over in a hair pin shape.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIRD WIRED.]