Animal Realism : Museum Taxidermist Mixes Art and Science to Create Lifelike Displays

At the end of a long hallway lined with trophy heads, just past an industrial-size freezer filled with animal carcasses, taxidermist Tim Bovard gently tucks the puckered eyelid of an ocelot pelt around a lifelike glass eye.

The delicate procedure--done with a dental pick--is one of the finishing touches for the small spotted wildcat. After some blow-drying to fluff the matted fur, the animal will take its place in “Cats! From Wild to Mild,” a new exhibit at the county Museum of Natural History.

If there’s a place where art, science and death intersect, it’s Bovard’s world.

He’s one of the few in-house museum taxidermists in the nation. For the past 13 years, he has transformed hundreds of mammal, bird, reptile and fish carcasses into lifelike models that occupy the permanent displays and dioramas of the museum.

Bovard, 43, spent the last three years searching for animals that died at zoos and conservation agencies to create 25 “life mounts” for the cats exhibit, which premiered at the museum in March and will be on display until September, when it will go on the road.

Bovard said he has been fascinated by animals since he was a child. Like many youngsters, he would collect snakes, lizards and spiders he found near his Claremont home.

After reading books on taxidermy, he created his first life mount from a dead skunk--at age 9. He said his mother let him “keep animals in the freezer next to the ice cream.”

His work is equal parts art and science. A trained wildlife artist, he received a zoology degree at the University of Idaho. He learned his craft as most taxidermists do, through an apprenticeship with a commercial taxidermy studio.

The process he follows, which can take months, starts with a cast of a sculpted base, painstakingly rendered from measurements of the carcass. The animal’s pelt is tanned in a process that Bovard says “actually is pretty bloodless and clean,” thinned on a table saw-like tool called a fleshing wheel, then stretched and sewn onto the mold.

In the museum elevator, colleagues wryly ask Bovard if he knows where the employee cafeteria’s “mystery meat” is coming from. Another co-worker frequently wonders aloud if Bovard knows that Norman Bates was a taxidermist.

Mild-mannered and bearded, he politely laughs off the jokes, but issues a warning: Don’t call his pieces “stuffed” animals.

“That’s when you really draw nails on the blackboard for a taxidermist,” he said.

To Bovard, taxidermy is the most demanding art, “the closest you can get to reality,” succeeding when it forces people to suspend their disbelief.

“The greatest moment is when I put that tiger in your living room, and for that moment you wouldn’t know if it was real. That is probably what I look for the most.”

To achieve this realism, Bovard carefully re-creates poses based on photographs, books and years of observing animals.

“Tim is different from most taxidermists because he is always looking for those positions that make you look at the animal and ask, ‘Is is real? Is it just pausing?” said Philippe Lapin, 28, Bovard’s assistant for the “Cats” exhibit.

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Bovard says he loves animals and spends much of his free time taking trips to the zoo or hiking to observe wildlife. Yet he also hunts and fishes, and says he would not have qualms about killing an animal for his work under certain circumstances: If it were not rare, there was no other way to get it and the body was used for research.

“I understand why some people would feel that these things, and even taxidermy as a whole, would be unappealing because for some, animals are like people,” he said.

But the way Bovard sees it, his work allows people to relate to animals they otherwise wouldn’t encounter.

“Maybe when kids see these animals, they will be interested in conservation or they’ll take better care of their animals at home. I’m trying to say something, to help animals in some way.”