Despite Vocation’s Stigma, Taxidermy Jobs Continue to Mount

Commerce-based taxidermist Simon Romero nearly always gets the same reaction when he tells strangers what he does for a living.

“How do you make any money?” the 37-year-old said, recalling the refrain recently from his small shop. “Do you get enough work to live off?”

Surprisingly, the answer for Romero and a handful of others like him in Southern California is yes. Even in a decade of computers and cyberspace, there is still a clientele for the age-old craft of making animal remains look lifelike. And while no one is getting rich, some taxidermists are seeing steady growth in their business as the state’s booming economy frees up more income for leisure pursuits such as hunting, fishing and, er, stuffing pets.

Pets, in fact, constitute one-fourth or more of all orders at some local taxidermy shops. Others, however, pointedly refuse to undertake preservation of Fido or Whiskers because distraught pet owners can often be difficult customers.

Yet the bulk of work for many shops is still what it has always been: hunting and fishing trophies. Southern California is home to thousands of anglers and hunters, many of whom venture as far as Africa and Asia to bag big game. Nothing, it seems, quashes listeners’ disbelief of a “fish story” like the mounted husk of the fish itself.

Local taxidermists have also taken advantage of their geography. Proximity to the film and television industry generates as much as 15% of annual revenue for some shops that make or rent pieces to movies, sitcoms and commercials. Bob’s Taxidermy in Fullerton, for example, once provided nearly 90 full-sized pieces of African big game to re-create a museum exhibit hall for a horror movie.

But while it occupies a viable, albeit tiny, niche in the nation’s economy, taxidermy throughout the years has taken on the stigma of being a creepy, even ghoulish, vocation. Norman Bates’ skill at stuffing birds, and ultimately his mother, in the film “Psycho” probably didn’t help matters.

Taxidermists, however, contend theirs is an artistic, even noble, endeavor and that the only thing creepy about it is the occasional weird request from their customers. Even veteran taxidermists are likely to cringe when asked to turn a beloved Australian Shepherd--head, legs and all--into a rug. One local shop was working on such an order last month.

Taxidermy, a Greek-derived word meaning “arrangement of skin,” has its modern roots in the early 1800s, when upholsterers occasionally took on jobs sewing up animal hides and stuffing them with rags and cotton, according to Cindy Crain of the Louisiana-based National Taxidermists Assn.

The process has evolved throughout the years, but much of it remains as it was back then. Dead animals are skinned and their hides dried and tanned until, in the words of one local practitioner, “you basically have shoe leather with fur on it.” Next, taxidermists fashion or buy prefabricated mannequins, usually made from the same hard plastic that goes into construction of airplane wings. The hide is then fitted over the mannequin and sewn together.

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Artistry comes in the detail--painting veins on eyeballs or plaque on teeth--and in the overall presentation of the piece. Many shops, in fact, have begun creating works worthy of natural history museums. Sergio Vigilato, a Burbank taxidermist, recently created an African savanna diorama in which three different species of antelope were bent over a watering hole, drinking. He charged $9,000 for the piece.

Crain estimates that there are roughly 100,000 practicing taxidermists in the United States, but only about 10% do it as a full-time job.

In California, there are no more than 500 professional taxidermists, and more than two-thirds of them live in Northern California, said Jim Silva, president of the California Assn. of Taxidermists in Salinas. That leaves roughly 170 scattered over the central and southern portions of the state. California does not regulate taxidermy and keeps no records on the number of professional practitioners.

But a small industry sometimes means there is more work to go around, which is good news for local taxidermists who, for the most part, are making just enough to support themselves and their families. Bob’s Taxidermy, for example, grossed $600,000 last year, but most of that went to paying for fixed costs and overhead, such as his staff of eight employees. Even for a one-person operation such as Vigilato’s African-American Taxidermy, average yearly revenue of $74,000 is still only enough to take care of costs and living expenses, he said.

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People employed by taxidermy shops apparently aren’t doing it for the money either. Bob’s Taxidermy, which besides its preservation work is considered the largest manufacturer and seller of taxidermy supplies on the West Coast, pays employees $400 to $680 a week with no benefits, owner Bob Snow said. Employment packages at Romero’s shop pay only about half that but include benefits.

The work itself, more than profits or salaries, seems to be the primary drive for most taxidermists. “Satisfaction for a job well done is all I need to take to the bank,” Vigilato said.

And Vigilato has recently had more reason to be satisfied. Taxidermy orders have grown steadily during the last few years, he said, mostly fueled by a jump in big-game hunting abroad. Most of his clients these days, he said, are “rich guys in the Valley with trophy rooms.”

Membership in Safari Club International, a hunting advocacy and education group, leaped 17% last year to 33,000, with roughly half saying they had ventured outside the country to hunt, club spokesman Bill Young said. The group has roughly 700 members locally.

Shooting game such as lions, zebras and giraffes is legal in many African game and wildlife preserves, where hunting is used as a means to prevent overpopulation and destruction of habitat.

Legal hunting is also used to thin out populations of deer, elk and other animals in California, and, not surprisingly, domestic game makes up a large percentage of orders for local taxidermists.

While he can’t afford to turn down work, one taxidermist is reluctant to mount dogs and cats because pet owners can often be emotional and demanding. “If I can, I really try to talk them out of it,” he said. “I tell them when you get it back, it’s just going to be a dead dog with no personality.”

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Frustration with bereaved pet owners has caused some taxidermists to stop taking their business altogether. But others, such as Romero and Vigilato, look at pets as an artistic challenge and work closely with owners to get the pieces right. It can be a laborious process, though. It’s tricky, they say, working from photographs or coaxing memories of a pet’s signature expressions from its grief-stricken master.

“I could mount three lions and two antelope in the time it takes me to do one pet,” said Vigilato, who charges between $2,500 and $3,000 for cats and dogs. In contrast, he recently charged only $1,850 for a diorama of a bobcat leaping after three spooked quail.

Ironically, most say they got into taxidermy out of love for animals. “It may not seem like it, but I care a lot about wildlife,” Snow said.

What’s weird, taxidermists say, isn’t them, but on occasion, their clients.

Each taxidermist, it seems, has a story about his strangest customer. Vigilato, for example, remembers the millionaire who wanted an elephant penis mounted to serve as a soda dispenser at his bar.

And Romero laughs when he tells of the tattooed eccentric who drove a Rolls-Royce and wore nothing but bikini shorts when he came to make arrangements for his dog. The man even paid Romero, his staff and the dog’s veterinarians $500 apiece to attend a funeral for the remains of the dog after Romero had mounted its hide.

“Yeah, he was a weirdo,” Romero said. “But he was still a nice guy.”