BELMONT RURAL PEOPLE

More unusual
than parking
the car in
the garage

Previous participants had built a plane, a racing car and restored a classic motorcycle in theirs. Perhaps Graham would turn out to be that Belmont rarity, a person who used his garage to park his car. In the event, it’s an even rarer activity. Taxidermy!

The website’s People section is not wholly fixated on garage use. Anyone qualifies for inclusion since all have a worthwhile story to tell. Graham would have qualified on several scores.

For twenty years he’s been a falconer. Many different birds of prey have passed through his hands and he presently owns (perhaps “co-exists with” is better) a magnificent Harris hawk.

Not over-endowed with toys as a child he delights in playthings adult men turn to. A radio-controlled truck in his shed looks big enough to do serious haulage work.

And there’s DIY. He’s installed air conditioning, put in a new kitchen, designed and created a lounge fireplace (shortly to be replaced) and masterminded a fourth bedroom on top of his garage and kitchen extension. Regarding this latter project, he praises the “fabulous” help and support he received from Herefordshire Council’s planning department. Asking for initial guidance, he gratefully recalls the advice, “First thing – don’t spend any money”.

But taxidermy is both a different skill and, in many ways, a different world. A darker, odder world. Graham has done it for twenty years and it is currently a paying (and tax-paying) sideline to his day job as a domestic appliance service engineer. There’s a compelling logic about why he took it up. At the time, wearing his falconry hat, he had a barn owl which was not in the best of spirits. Returning a bird of prey to the wild is a skilled and protracted job and he handed the owl over to a nature trust engaged in this work.

Two years later the trust phoned to say the owl had been found dead in a nesting box. “Do you want it back?” he was asked. And that’s how it started.

Since then he has handled creatures varying in size from a horse to a bullfinch. So what’s the key issue? Time, says Graham. Decomposition starts the moment the body is on the work bench. “It’s not like doing an Airfix model aeroplane, you can’t stop and come back the following day. You have to work quickly, but carefully.”

Taxidermy is hugely misundertood. The general public often sees it simply as “stuffing” and, yes, Graham has heard all the jokes. But stuffing over-simplifies a complex process. In all but the smallest creatures the bones are removed too, the shape being maintained with a template created from polystyrene.

But the client – or Graham, for that matter – may want some form of expression in the completed work. A fox (one of the most popular commissions) may look more impressive with its mouth open in a snarl. It is possible to buy prosthetic fox’s teeth but Graham feels the real thing are obviously more authentic and closer to the idea of re-creating the individual animal. As a result the skull, with the teeth, is retained.

Graham prefers clients to have their own ideas about how the creature should appear. One woman, looking for a Christmas present for her husband, required an owl to peer out from garden flowers. An odd choice. Interestingly, when the client’s mother-in-law saw the end-product she burst into tears. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she said

Many commissions are based on creatures killed in road accidents where the amount of reconstruction may be formidable. One job involved an otter crushed from end to end. There are ways of disguising irreparable damage. A feral cat which had lost an ear fighting was reconstructed sneaking close to a fence post which hid the defect.

But it’s here that taxidermy takes on an unexpected twist. Given that decomposition starts very soon after death how is it that Graham’s commissions are based on viable corpses? It may come as a surprise to many that a small percentage of people (It must surely be a small percentage?) seeing a dead creature on the road or in a field pick it up and put it in the freezer. The decision to turn it over to Graham may occur years later – in one case as long as fifteen years.

And it’s here too that the law steps in. To prevent unregulated slaughter, especially of protected species, the government department DEFRA requires a paper trail covering all instances of a creature’s body changing hands. Graham, who is DEFRA certificated, is required to ask how the client came by the body. If the reply is “I shot it.” then the client is asked politely to take a walk.

It’s clear, nevertheless, there are equivocal reactions to taxidermy. Graham exhibits at country shows and has seen people wincing and saying “Oohh,” as they approach his display. They appear not to approve. Yet, once past, they look over their shoulders to check again what they saw.

Others appear to relate Graham’s taxidermy to the death of the creature, holding Graham in some way responsible. Some boo and hiss. Some say, “It’s not right, it’s barbaric.” Graham has seen it all before and stays calm, occasionally pointing out the paradox that the protester is wearing a leather jacket for which a cow has died. Surprisingly, there is a tendency then for protesters to apologise for their outburst.

Graham is a skilled taxidermist. Neutral about the subject throughout the interview the website editor suddenly found himself converted when shown a beautifully reconstructed kestrel. Raptors are one of the editor’s particular enthusiasms; being able to see the texture and colouring of the plumage close-up was a remarkable experience.

Graham nods, then adds, “But I’d rather see it out there, alive.”

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