I just aquired a large bird, had it frozen for a few days to kill some ants (no external wounds, just a colony near by) fresh specimin, last night i cleaned out the inside and coated it (the cavity) with salt. I was planning on using wires to position it and let it dry in my closet... any suggestions for this one?
next project... organs... i am looking for techniques to preserve organs for use in my art, i started sal drying the heart from the above last night, but doubt it will work, any thoughts on this?
final...small bird...little black and white one...friend said i can hang by its feet and it will dry over a few months, organs and all, i've had it for a few weeks in my closet and i haven't seen any signs of rot... was this good advice, or am i going to touch it one day and have it explode on me?
sorry for the vague questions, i'm looking for as much info as possible (can't get to the library for a few weeks) please email me responses to Genpablo@aol.com
slit wrists and perfect smiles
Potter
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you talking about these birds. What kind are they? If they are songbirds they are illegal to possess. And hanging a bird upside down in a closet is a time bomb waiting to explode. It's a bird,not a rose bouquet.Either skin it out right and treat it with borax or put it in the freezer. Hope you get that smell out of your closet.
And some milquetoast is going to tell me, "There are no dumb questions." OK, then the only way to answer this intelligent inquiry is to plead that they NOT ASSUME any knowledge without having acquired it. Now he wants to save the guts. There goes biology, physiology, zoology, gastrointerology, and a few others as well.
field is perhaps narrower than you think, as I have perfect experience with your suggested method for small bird presevation.
As a young boy one of my first real jobs was as a painter. The venue was a church. Along with the slaping of paint on the shingles, priest made it known that said steple needed a cleaning as well. So, from a hundred and fifty feet up, we halled down perhaps a thousand perfectly preseved starlings. They would get in thru the doormers and could not angle the flight out! They were in excellent presevation, except for the slight odor and sunken eyes .. I believe we half filled the foreman's halfton truck and flew to the dump with them.
So if you could find in your closet a replication of a church stepel with doormer ventilation and, pluck out eyes & add new ones, a little skin-so-soft for the odor and I believe you'd be in business. Ask the padre though, if you decide to go there.
Also, people of my parish have been salting all kinds a meat for ages. (Incidence of stroke is high incidentely.) But mostly it is for cabbage and turnip and potato fare. We also dry fish on clotheslines. Meat and fish tend to shrink...cause of the SALT. Good eating though.
As for art and guts, well the some have been making strings and proferlactics for years.
Organs. Cast them. See the arc hives. Good luck. Some people might think you are strange, but not me. I know artist can be a bit different...again good luck.
You say you cleaned out the cavity and salted it. Did you remove the whole body or just the organs ? If just the organs from a large bird and you want to hang in your closet , you'll have maggots all over. As for the small black and white bird , its a warbler, illegal and probably so with the big bird also.
If you are for real, I don't wanna know. Why are you drying things in your closet? I'm getting all tingly with dejavu and the Jeffrey Dahmer case and his neighbors wondering "what that smell is". Nice, quiet man though.
It's hard enough telling some folks that Picasso is art. But when you start using ORGANS in art, it makes me wonder what the hell else is in that closet of yours. Hell, the maggots will add zest to the scenario.
And Gordon you are just as nuts. Your "perfect experience" with Potters "suggested method of small bird preservation" is anything BUT close to perfect with the "slight odor and sunken eyes". Hello? Did you ever come out of that steeple?
Does the "Bates Motel" from the movie "Pscycho" ring a bell? At least HE used CHEMICALS on HIS mother in the rocking chair.
I detect a "vacancy" here as well.
I know that I have a few blocks less than a full stove and a few bats/starlings short of a full belfry, but: My moma made the best beef TONGUE sandwitches when I was a little kid and a lot of people can't believe me to this day. Went to school with my lunch pail full. Also, did you ever try Cod Tongue & Cheeks with mash? Good I tell u.
As for art and animals parts, well I believe that some dada artist did a scupture/painting with spider web and organs are food for some and food can be art and so on...
I have the perfect experience yes. The experience I related was truth. Because it did produce odor and shrunken eyes. It is for pablo to decide it's merit and by extention his so called closet.
Thanks for imput and I don't watch movies or get A&E often so can't comment on Bates Motel et al. Adios
Taxidermy means moving skin. All taxidermy is preserving the skin of an animal and reconstructing the animal. Even though the technique for a bird is different than for a game head or a fish, the principle is the same. Skin, preserve, and put back together. What you are doing is not sound practice. Your specimens will eventually deteriorate. The fact that you are drying the specimens will slow the process of decay, but it will happen non-the-less. I would recommend, if you are not pulling our legs that you get a good taxidermy book and at least see what you are dealing with.
Tony
Anyone who signs off with "slit wrists" etc, is in my mind TEMPORARY, rather then a contemporary artist, and cant be taken seriously...
I can't read it any other way....it's a pull your leg question...which I atempted to reply in like manner. But some don't share my sense of humor...c'est la vie old friends.