The owl flew in low from the left, just out of my line of sight, and glided over the hood of my car as I drove along a country road near my farm in Northumberland County, about two hours east of Toronto. Odd, I thought, for a barred owl to be winging about in the middle of the day. They are generally nocturnal.
Ten minutes later, I made a turn and continued along. And there was another barred – this one dead at the roadside. I pulled over to take a look.
Since buying my 100-acre farm, I’ve encountered many wild things, alive and dead. Coyotes wander the property, leaving deer and rabbit parts. Black bears come through, too, and wild turkeys, porcupines, weasels and otters (yes, otters wander). I hear owls more than I see them – great horned, screech and barred owls make a racket at night. But I’d never seen one up close, apart from in a museum or refuge.
I turned the owl over. It had a drip of blood on its beak. It was limp, not yet cold. I lifted it, careful not to damage any feathers, and placed it in the back of my car. I wasn’t sure what I’d do next but the inevitable evisceration by turkey vulture seemed an indignity this magnificent animal did not deserve.
I drove home and called my sister, Joyce Snyder, who volunteers for a wildlife rehab in Sudbury. “I’ve got this owl in the back of my car. … Would it be odd if I looked into have it taxidermied?” (Not the proper term, but what did I know?) I’d seen business cards for taxidermists pinned to bulletin boards and ads in local papers. Not being a hunter, I had paid little mind. Out here in farm country, I now mused, one might have a taxidermist just as one has a doctor, vet or mechanic.
“That would be a wonderful way to honour a magnificent bird,” my sister said. I looked up Pine Ridge Taxidermy, just 15 minutes away, and sent an e-mail. Cindy Murphy replied immediately. “We only do mammals. You want Ken Morrison. He does birds. He’s the best.” More than 200 of his birds are held at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, I later found out.
Taxidermy has moved in and out of fashion over the years, lately catching the eye of decorators looking to add a whimsical “naturalist” touch to, for example, bars and restaurants. You can also find specimens in curio shops and at online auctions. I’d always preferred to enjoy animals alive. But finding this owl got me thinking about the art form and what it means to preserve a creature this way.
Thus began my journey down the taxidermy rabbit hole.
“You need to get a permit,” Morrison told me over the phone. “Go online, register the bird, and bring it to me as soon as you can. I can’t touch it without a number.”
In Ontario, possession of certain birds of prey – alive or dead – is permitted by the provincial Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, 1997. Some songbirds and migratory birds, however, fall primarily under federal control, and possession is prohibited (though there are exceptions). On top of this, each province may have additional regulations.
In general, anyone can keep a dead animal in Ontario – including roadkill – though buying and selling is mostly prohibited. This is to help prevent poaching, monitor populations and track diseases, such as avian flu. A mounted creature cannot usually be sold without special permission. I would not, for instance, be able to post my owl on Facebook Marketplace.
Morrison works from a small room in the basement of his home in Peterborough. A sign at the end of his driveway reads Feathers Alive Bird Taxidermy. I found him at his desk and mumbled something about my owl. “The proper term is ‘mounted,’” he said. “But thank you for not saying ‘stuffed.’”
He examined the bird. “A fantastic specimen,” he said. “Likely a young mature female.” He showed me some of his award-winning mounts – a kestrel, golden eagle, great horned owl, peregrine falcon, dozens of small birds. So perfect, so lifelike. The only thing missing was a cacophony of chirps.
In her book, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing, Canadian Rachel Poliquin acknowledges the practice of preserving and displaying animals can be polarizing.
“Abhorrence is understandable in vegetarians, animal rights activists and any community that believes that there is no excuse for killing an animal,” she writes. “But for meat eaters and anyone who owns leather shoes, bags or furniture, the sharp negative reactions to taxidermy is less straightforward. What is the difference between a steak, a belt and a trophy?”
For rural folks who hunt, having a deer mounted is just one way of commemorating the experience. There’s a narrative component too – a building up of lore, if you will – that Poliquin explores in an article for The University of British Columbia Magazine. Taxidermy “isn’t merely a representation of an animal,” she writes. “It is the animal, but blurred with human longing to perpetuate its form.”
Morrison mounted his first animal when he was in his teens. “It barely resembled a bird,” he said. He studied a mail-order taxidermy course, then began a career in conservation for provincial and federal natural resources agencies.
He was not surprised to have a city boy like me bring him a road-killed bird. Over the past decade or so, Morrison’s taxidermy clientele has changed. Fewer hunters with their trophies and more naturalists like me, sporting critters who’ve met their demise from something other than a bullet, trap, hook or net.
“How would you like her mounted?” he asked. I pointed to one of his owls, a barred perched on a branch, wings lightly tucked like it was about to launch. “I like that pose,” I said. “It’s natural and looks like she’s about to take off and murder a rodent.” Morrison nodded.
Taxidermists consider themselves sculptors. In removing the animal’s skin, sculpting an anatomically correct form – Morrison uses foam – and setting a stance, the goal is to present the animal as it would exist in the wild.
But the artistry goes much deeper. “The important thing is to do it well,” Len Murphy of Pine Ridge Taxidermy told me as we toured his showroom, which includes the second-largest mounted polar bear in the world. “To have that expression in the face of a wolf or a fox, to capture that life in his eyes and how he carries himself and how he moves.” When Murphy mounted Bull, the ROM’s formidable white rhino, he consulted continuously with the museum’s animal experts to ensure every aspect was just right.
On a visit to one of the ROM’s storage rooms with assistant curator of mammals Burton Lim, I saw specimens more than a century old. One of the ROM’s exhibit windows is dedicated to extinct animals. Their great auk – the flightless bird hunted to extinction in the mid-19th century – is one of 78 skins in the world and is thought to have once belonged to John James Audubon.
ROM’s assistant curator of mammals, Burt Burton, with the museum’s collection.Paul Eekhoff/Royal Ontario Museum/Supplied
Lim asked if I’d seen last year’s hit ROM exhibit on cats, which featured several mounted felines, domestic and wild. “We probably wouldn’t be able to do a similar show with those,” he said, pointing to a shelf with a dozen mounted dogs. People, it seems, are more sensitive to a mounted Rover than a Whiskers.
Each March, as part of the Toronto Sportsmen’s Show, the Canadian Taxidermists Association conducts public demonstrations. “Anyone can come by and see different aspects of taxidermy being done right at the booth,” said president Chris Rawn. “We usually have deer, birds, even fish being put together.”
The CTA has about 80 members and, said Rawn, numbers seem to be holding steady, though Morrison has now retired and Murphy is scaling back to mostly doing deer shoulder mounts for locals.
Meanwhile, interest in historical specimens seems to be growing. Last November, Waddington’s in Toronto curated an auction called Cabinet of Curiosities, a reference to the precursors to formal museums in the 16th and 17th centuries. Collecting specimens acquired during the Age of Exploration was something of an obsession for the royals of Europe and Asia.
Several mounted birds in the auction were identified as “Victorian avian taxidermy specimens.” The house doesn’t generally deal with taxidermy, Waddington’s spokesperson Tess McLean said, but these items were part of a larger collection.
Some of the mounts fetched surprising prices. A barn owl under a glass dome, with an expected hammer price of $150 to $250, sold for $5,500. A kingfisher went for $3,250.
Photo essay: In Yellowknife, a taxidermy monument captures the diversity of the Arctic’s wildlife
“That’s a bit crazy,” said Ben Lovatt, owner of the Prehistoria Museum and SkullStore on Yonge Street in Toronto. “Somebody overpaid a lot.”
Lovatt has been collecting mounted animals and body parts since he was in his 20s. His shop/museum houses dozens of mounted creatures. The self-professed naturalist and conservationist caters to pop-star clients such as Drake and Lights. He also provides props for film and TV productions.
Lovatt said some visitors to his shop are discomfited by what they see – but also curious.
“I think taxidermy is almost more important than ever,” he said. “It was originally a curiosity. And then it became really in vogue in the seventies. But in the modern era, it still has its place, the way that zoos went from being freak shows of wildlife to being conservation facilities. When you can directly see something – when you can actually touch an animal – then it’s real.”
Ken Morrison, left, and writer Richard Snyder holding his beloved Ethel the owl.
My owl, Ethel, is certainly as real as can be. From her living room perch, she commands the room, her eyes following me – and she seems poised to take flight should an errant rodent sneak out of the wood pile.
The other day, I found a blue jay frozen in a snowbank. Lessons learned, I wrapped it, put it in the freezer and consulted my taxidermist. Turns out, in Ontario, I can legally possess a blue jay found dead. So Ethel will soon have a companion.
