Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum

Vulpes vulpes Part II

I apologize for not explaining this earlier — you may be wondering why the skins of the animals we prepare in the lab are not ‘life-like’ or posed.  We prepare them as study skins, or in a way where they may still be studied and their features apparent, but are able to slide in a thin museum drawer.  We do have quite a few live mounted individuals and I post about them on occasion, but the majority of our specimens are prepared as study skins.  

This is the conclusion of Emily’s first skinning and stuffing project.  We found this young red fox in the back of the freezer while we were cleaning it a few weeks ago and it proved to be a good one to practice on.  My first skinning job was on a mouse and my hands aren’t so deft at fine details, so I found it to be somewhat of a struggle.  With a larger individual like Emily’s fox, she had more surface area to practice the techniques involved with skinning — her 1 fox is probably the equivalent of 15 of my mice when it comes to that.  

My favorite part about this entire process, and which I neglected to get pictures of, was Emily holding the flat fox pelt up while I brushed and blow-dried it —with a hairdryer — after it was shampooed and cleaned (it had quite a bit of blood in the fur).  Imagine the ridiculousness of that image. 

In the end I realized we were out of cotton so she and Sam (well, his crane) both had to use a type of straw filler that seemed to work decently.  Good work!