#zoolology

This is my favorite human, Tim Bovard. He’s the one on the right wearing the mask. (The other one is a wax ape head but we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Tim is the Museum Taxidermist at The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles @nhmla and has been there over 35 years! He literally knows where all the bodies are buried.

Tim is also my mentor, whom I affectionately call my ‘Taxidermy Dad’. He’s become that for a lot of us; his volunteers, students at Prey Taxidermy and co-workers. I sure do miss him right now, so I was pleased as punch when I got this photo from him.

The other fella in the photo is the face of a male Orangutang that was preserved via a process called ‘wax infiltration’. It’s based on an old medical technique for preserving soft tissue by slowly replacing the moisture with wax.

It’s very complicated and finicky and we’re all going to make Tim come on my Instagram live ‘Dead-Stream’ and explain it to us one day.

I miss Tim and all of the wonderful & weird people in my life. I’m grateful for you guys more and more everyday. I know we’ll all be together again soon.