This girl will make a scarecrow from your beloved pet

One of the last texts of Samizdat is dedicated to the Muscovite Margarita Chaika - one of the few domestic taxiders, which is taken to turn into stuffed animals into stuffed animals. Among taxisoders, such work is considered unacceptable, and the customers of stuffed cats from their favorite cats and dogs themselves are perceived as abnormal people. But Margarita is fighting the workshop and public prejudices and Stigma. She makes the relics from the feline minced meat, from reptiles, mammals and would even work with a human body, if they could make a stuffed from Russians legislatively.

Lelik lived a long, by the standards of guinea pigs, life for ten years. And all in order to then turn into a stuffed guinea pig with cucumbers . The scarecrow stands in the pose of Christ on the mountain, on his muzzle, an impudent grin. Arina started a Lelik when she was a child. It was love at first sight. Over the years of his life, she managed to become attached to him, get used to the sounds that he makes when he eats hay or gnaws carrots. Arina with difficulty fell asleep in an unfamiliar place where there was no lolik nearby. He died of the most common disease among guinea pigs - from cancer. Arina already knew about the Moscow taxidermist Margarita Chaika, who is taking on which almost no other taxidermist does: perpetuates the bodies of pets. Arina could not let go of the one whom she loved so much.

To order a scarecrow from your pet, you need to either transfer the body to the master immediately after the death of the animal, or freeze it in time. This will stop the process of decomposition of tissues. Arina put the Lelik in the freezer as soon as she returned home from the veterinary clinic, where he had to put him to sleep. For four months the body lay in the freezer, Arina did not dare to do anything, doubted her decision. Well, then she wrote to Margarita and asked how to transport the remains of a lolik from an eagle to Moscow.

The hostess wanted her beloved fluffy to be immortalized in such a position. Arina was inspired by the Senya stickerpack on the VKontakte social network. At first she wanted to give him a small knife in one of the paws, but she remembered how much Lelik loved the cucumbers: “When he heard the sound of the refrigerator that opened, he began to squeak and did not calm down until they gave him a piece of cucumber.” Then Arina realized that there should be cucumbers in his paws and after death.

The taxister Margarita was also surprised at an unusual order, although she had already performed work with pets, but in a more traditional form. However, Arina was very pleased with the result, she stores a stuffed Lelik on a special shelf in the bedroom and hopes that her other pets will once take the place next to him. Arina says that Margarita managed to convey the character of a lolik, and the presence of his scarecrow in the house gives her a feeling of peace.

Russian taxidermists usually do not work with domestic animals. Their customers are hunters. If you contact the usual Moskovo taxiDermic studio with a request to make for you a scarecrow of a deceased rabbit or cat, then a polite refusal awaits you at best.

Margarita is one of the few in Russia accepts orders for the manufacture of stuffed animals. The owners of various pets turn to it: from reptiles to mammals, from pythons and chameleons to cats and domestic rabbits. Today, the memorial perpetuating of pets is most of the orders that Margarita is working on. She fights with the prejudices of taxiders and the general public against those owners of pets who want to perpetuate the body of her pet. Despite all the difficulties associated with memorial taxidermia, it does not refuse customers even in the most hopeless cases.

Interest in animals appeared in Margarita in early childhood. She liked to start new pets, she often brought home someone from the pet store. Margarita recalls how she buried the dead hamsters in the ground in bottles and took out to see how the decomposition process is going. Once she found a kitten mummy in the attic, welded his head at home - and so made her first skull. After that, the acquaintance found out about her hobby and brought the bird’s heads found in the trash. Having examined them, Margarita realized that taxiermia is a whole science.

Margarita hid her first finds and results of the experiments from her parents, but this did not last long. Mom found a cache of her daughter with dried wings, skulls and bones of animals and decided that her daughter was a satanist. Margarita explained to her that collecting the remains of animals is not much different from collecting butterflies. To finally calm down my mother helped that the daughter began to earn the first money on sales and decided to make a taxiermia with her profession.

Margarita began with osteology, and more specifically from the manufacture of skeletons and bone processing. Gradually, she took up the scarecrow. Sometimes her orders include different types of taxidermia: for example, once a Moscow breeder of white -brown hedgehogs ordered a stuffed scarecrow of three dead pets from Margarita in different types: one skeleton of a hedgehog with needles, the other - without needles sitting on a mushroom of chaga, and the most beloved client asked to make a scarecrow.

Now Margarita is 25 years old, she lives in Moscow and takes on a variety of orders. Among them there are both work for cinema and museums, and individual projects. Memorial stuffed animals, skulls and skeletons of pets from Margarita have been ordering more and more often. Perhaps because it is difficult to find another taxidermist in Russia who would not underground work underground. Margarita publishes a photo of her products on social networks and opens against a public stigma related to the topic of death and posthumous perpetuation of animals.

Taxidermists of the old hardening do not take up the manufacture of stuffed animals. Some cannot even dissect either cats or dogs, for them it is like opening a person. Animals that have been conducting next to people all their lives are endowed with human qualities and perceived as equal beings. And according to modern human rules, the body of the neighbor must be betrayed by the Earth, and not leave nearby in any form.

Other taxidermists believe that the customer of such a scarecrow is by definition an abnormal person who will be impossible to please. The owners know every scratch, every who has fallen in the hair of their pet, and stuffed animals are rarely identical to the living original. Especially stuffed mammals that are very individual and unlike each other. Masters are afraid that the client will not only be dissatisfied with the work, but also wounded by thoughts that the resulting scarecrow only insults the memory of their beloved beast, and it will already be impossible to fix it.

The second difficulty is associated with the quality of the “material”, which falls into the hands of a taxidermist in the case of working with a pet. These are often extremely complex corpses for posthumous processing. Pets most often die from old age, after long diseases. This means a dehydrated organism, a thickened skin, a drained body, often shave -blades on the paws under the catheters and ultrasound. The bodies of animals who died of some diseases are very quickly leaned when trying to make a stuffed animal from them. It is necessary to finish the wool, and whole tails and ears have to be replaced, and for this, look for animals with identical dimensions and shade of wool.

It is not at all that the taxisodermists who are engaged in the production of trophy stuffed animals are happening. Usually they work with the same hunters for years, with the same commercial animals. On a bear, deer or fox, you can buy the basis of polyurethane in a store for taxiders and pull on it a prepared skin. Since wild animals die at the hands of hunters at a young age, their skin is more suitable for processing and pulling on mannequins. Making a hunting trophy, having access to consumables, is quite easy.

“In my practice, there were no cases that the client received the work and said that he did not like it,” says Margarita. “I think this is also due to the fact that only other taxidermists are devoted to the subtleties of the taxistmist’s work, and people from the outside may not even imagine why his pet’s scarecrow looks like it looks.”

For Margarita clients, reuniting with a favorite pet is a dream, a sacrament with an admixture of Voodoo magic. They put stuffed into a prominent place in the apartment, often admire them and recall joyful moments associated with the resting pets. Someone with pleasure shows the scarecrow to the guests, someone is afraid of a disapproving reaction, but is still not going to hide his favorite stuffed from prying eyes.

Rice from casket

One of the last works of Margarita, published in her public in Vkontakte, is the relics of the Holy Cat in Larz . The customer of the work is an elderly man from Yekaterinburg, who did not know anything about taxiermia, until he decided to perpetuate the body of his deceased cat. He lived with her for 18 years. According to him, the cat was holy. She helped him many times, was amazingly smart, knew all the possible commands. The main difficulty was that her body by that time had been in an impromptu crypt by that time.

Margarita suggested that the owner of the cat hoped that her body in the crypt would turn into “relics”, that is, mummified. In the Christian tradition, the imperfection of the relics is considered as one of the evidence of holiness, and their presence is a condition for the attitude of the saints to the face. However, a miracle did not happen, and a year later, the owner had to exhumer the remains of a cat to send them to Moscow to Margarita.

“I have the most admiration for the fact that he had the spirit of picking up the rotting body of his beloved cat with shabby wool, teeming with maggots. Everything was very unpleasant there when they brought it to me. It was just rotten minced meat. ”

Since the body was lying in a room with air access for a long time, it began to deceive. This means that the fat that was on the body of the animal began to go to another phase. It looks like the body is covered with a thick layer of wax. The bones were fat, they were difficult to process. If the cat died of cancer, then the bones would have scattered during cleansing, so cancer washes calcium from bones. But, fortunately, the cat skeleton was strong, and Margarita managed to complete the order.

The owner asked for him to make a set of tail, paws, skulls and other seeds to place it all in the casket. Margarita found a beautiful soft casket. The man periodically called her and was interested in how the preparation of “relics” was going on. “Because of this story with a casket, I began to call it to myself by Koshchez immortal. And he looked like. "

Despite the terrible state of the body after the exhumation, Margarita noticed that until the last day they carefully looked after the animal and took care: all the teeth were in place for the age of 18, which was rare for Persian cats with a flat muzzle, no tooth stone. Her tail fracture was fraught and claws were trimmed.

Not stranger to a school teacher

Another difficult client of Margarita was a woman who called her three years ago and said in a trembling voice that her cat dies in her arms. He was 18 years old. The woman really wanted to perpetuate the cat and immediately began to ask what to do with the body. Margarita instructed the woman and said that the cat’s body immediately after his death should be put in the freezer. However, the woman could not say goodbye to the cat so quickly and mourned him for almost a whole day, holding it in her arms.

Even when the Cat’s body reached Margarita, she could not immediately start working with him. The hostess decided to save his DNA in cryocammer, and for three months they waited for the representative of the Cryorus company, who was supposed to pick up a piece of cat's flesh for preservation in liquid nitrogen. The company promises that in the case of the invention of cloning technology, they will return to the lives of all people and animals whose material is stored in their cells. Margarita tried to explain to the mistress of the cat that it was pointless to store DNA in the nitrogen and she did not have to pay for his storage in cryocammer every month. She gave the client the contact of a familiar geneticist who tried to dissuade her, but the hostess decided, just in case, paying the services of a cryocompass.

“Finally, the owner of the Cryocenter arrived. It seemed to me that if she has some exalted ideas, then she still cares more so that someone monthly pays a fee to support her cryobene business. ”

But the most difficult thing began during the manufacture of a stuffed animal. The Cat’s body was in a deplorable state: oncology on the lower jaw, the front paw with a fracture under the gypsum, urolithiasis, due to which his wool crumbled from the tail and ears, as soon as Margarita began to remove the skin from the cat. The skin itself was thick and dehydrated. It was impossible to make a good scarecrow from such a material.

“I called and told her that it would be better to make not a scarecrow, but a coffin for a cat and bury it. But the woman stood on her own, and then I inflated the price tag to refuse. It did not help: she agreed to him. It was not some fabulous amount, but I did not think that a poor middle-aged woman would want to give such money for a stuffed man. ”

Margarita began to work. The shabby ears had to be replaced with wolf, the tail was restored with the help of wool from other parts of the body, to block the bald heads on the head. Initially, the client asked to make a hinge scarecrow so that the cats bend its paws and it could be put on the shoulders. But this turned out to be impossible, and for the flaws of work to be less noticeable, Margarita made a scarecrow in a sleeping pose.

Another incident happened to the cat’s body remaining after the preparation. Margarita left him in the freezer of the Timiryazevsky Museum, where she was earned then. The hostess asked her to return her body so that she could bury him in her cat cemetery, where her other pets rested. But it so happened that during quarantine the freezer, where there was a cat and a bunch of other material, was disconnected from electricity. Therefore, the body of the cat rotted, and he, along with another decomposed flesh, was simply thrown away. The hostess was horrified when she recognized the truth. She asked to find out the scene of disposal and was ready to rummage in the trash to find the remains. Margarita was worth a lot of effort to try to convince her, but it still did not work out.

Most Margarita was worried when she passed the stuffed man to the customer. She was afraid that the hostess would say that this was not her cat, and would demand to return the money. However, when Margarita came to her with a scarecrow, the woman saw his face, burst into tears and shouted "It is him!"

“It was one of my most difficult works and the most difficult client. However, I don't think anything bad about this woman. Yes, she looked strange and talked strangely, but she was not strange than any of my school teachers. ”

Rabbit in the freezer

“I remember my very first order for a pet. It was a white rabbit, which meant a lot for his mistress. ” After Margarita completed this order for the girl, they began to communicate online and made friends. Now she is already doing the second stuffed for Dasha - a bust of her beloved dog.

Snowty rabbit appeared in Dasha when she moved from her parents to her very first rented apartment. Sahara was 12 years old when his back paw failed and he stopped walking. Despite concern and love, sugar quickly stunted and became more and more like an old man. Once he ate his last strawberry, published a quiet sigh and died.

“I just couldn’t part with sugar,” says Dasha, now the mistress of the stuffed white rabbit. -I could not bury him, bury it in the ground or somehow get rid of it. This is not garbage to throw it and forget it. It was unthinkable for me. ”

Friends and relatives of Dasha did not understand how to store the body of a pet in the freezer. And even more so, how can one think about making it a scarecrow. He lay in his usual “sleeping” pose separately from all products, in a small “cryocammer” with a door. Sometimes Dasha briefly took out the body of the rabbit from the freezer, checked whether everything was in order with him, stroked him and hugged him. She tried to make a difficult decision, while everyone around considered her abnormal. It was said that his soul would not calm down so that taxisermium is a mockery and mockery over the body of an animal. Sometimes Dasha herself doubted whether all this was correct and would it be better to bury the pet and say goodbye to him, as she was advised.

It took six months to make a decision of Dasha. Then she gave the body of sugar Margarita so that she made her scarecrow for her. And she never regretted it. Despite the fact that the resulting scarecrow was very remotely similar to her beloved rabbit.

“When I saw him for the first time, I realized that I was absolutely right, listening to myself,” says Dasha.

She received a bag from Margarita with what was left of sugar after the preparation, and this bag buried. After that, she had no doubt that the soul of sugar calmed down. She believes that the rabbit is not angry with her because she left a part of it as a souvenir. «Он же видит, что я его люблю, глажу, пылинки с него сдуваю. Я думаю, ему приятно, что его до сих пор здесь любят».

Даша мечтает о том, что они с Сахаром проживут вместе долгую жизнь и она станет старушкой, у которой любимой драгоценностью будет не чайный сервиз, а чучело её первого кролика. Она и после смерти не хочет расставаться ни с одним из своих зверей и надеется, что похоронят её вместе с ними. «Раз древние люди, наши предки, делали так, значит, в этом был какой-то смысл. Может быть, это поможет мне после смерти снова встретиться с ними. Мне бы очень этого хотелось».

Кроме Сахара, у Даши хранится дома чучело её птицы-амадина, а скоро она получит от Маргариты настольный бюст собаки. После Сахара она решила увековечивать всех питомцев, с которыми когда-либо будет жить.

Судьба и сломанная лопата

Хотя Маргарита и делала чучела домашних животных на заказ, она долго не хотела подвергать этой процедуре собственных погибших питомцев. Однажды её кота на её глазах сбила машина. Она вспоминает, как сидела с ним на руках и кричала, что его ещё можно спасти и нужно отвезти его в клинику, хотя кот уже был мёртв. Решила его похоронить и отправилась в лес.

Когда она копала могилу, лопата в её руках сломалась. Маргарита восприняла это как знак и отнесла кота домой, положила в морозилку. Несколько недель она лазила туда через его тело за пельменями — и в конце концов поняла, что взгляд его мёртвых глаз уже не вызывает у неё таких чувств, как раньше. Тогда она решилась его препарировать.

Этот опыт позволил ей узнать кое-что новое о себе и других. Кот достался ей от бывшего молодого человека. Вскрыв его, она обнаружила у него перелом лопатки, сросшийся при жизни. Оказалось, что её бывший избивал кота, о чём она не знала раньше.

«Это помогло мне внутренне успокоиться и принять смерть кота. А также простить себя. Потому что, когда я увидела изнутри повреждения, которые он получил от удара машины, я поняла, что ни сама, ни врачи не смогли бы ему ничем помочь. Даже если бы в тот же миг он оказался на операционном столе».

Три хвоста для кота Вайса

Клиент должен понимать, что в чучеле остаётся очень мало от его любимца. Всё, что имеет свойство гнить и разлагаться, нужно вынуть, а шкуру тщательно обработать химикатами, чтобы в ней не заводились паразиты. Глаза и слизистые поверхности рта заменят на силикон, пластик и стекло. У котов после смерти быстро облазит шерсть с кончиков ушей и хвоста, а иногда и со всего тела, поэтому им заменяют целые части тела и ставят заплатки на наиболее прохудившиеся места.
«Я решила не сдаваться и победить, наконец, этих кошек», — говорит Маргарита.

Аврора, хозяйка белоснежного британского кота Вайса, призналась, что, когда они обсуждали эти процессы с таксидермисткой, ей часто становилось не по себе. Несколько раз она хотела всё отменить и забрать тело. Но потом всё же поняла, что не может расстаться с Вайсом. «Столько сил было в него вложено, столько бессонных ночей я провела с ним после операций, столько денег отдала врачам. Он стал моим ребёнком, самым родным на свете. Я не могла с ним просто так расстаться», — говорит Аврора. Она смирилась со всеми несовершенствами таксидермии и была готова встретиться с новым Вайсом.

Мех кота остался почти таким же, каким был при жизни: блестящим, без проплешин. Чужой хвост, который пришлось заменять трижды, не отличить от родного. Глаза сперва заказали с белорусской фабрики, но качество хозяйке не понравилось, и тогда Маргарита где-то добыла красивые стеклянные глаза зеленого цвета. Хорошо получилось передать серьёзный взгляд кота. А вот форма морды слегка исказилась. Аврора сетует, что неудачно подобрала фото для изготовления чучела, ведь мастеру сложно представить живым питомца, которого он никогда в жизни не видел.

Когда Аврора получила чучело, она целый час обнимала его, не могла выпустить из рук. Вайс вернулся домой.

Make pet taxidermy great again

Как и многие другие отрасли, российская таксидермия отстаёт от западной. Это касается и трофейной таксидермии, и мемориальной. Например, полиуретановые манекены, которые значительно упрощают работу таксидермиста, появились в России в 90-е, а в Америке они используются уже с 70-х годов. В 90-е уровень российской таксидермии драматически поднялся вместе с ростом интереса ко всем товарам и услугам «роскоши». Тогда в России тоже стали использовать и изготавливать основы для чучел. С тех пор мало что изменилось, и наши таксидермические студии и сейчас работают с теми же клиентами-охотниками и с теми же типами заказов, что и раньше.

На Западе всё это время появлялись новые инструменты и элементы для сборки чучел. Глаза для чучел, которые продают в России, изготавливаются на кукольных фабриках, и качество их соответствующее. Немецкие мастера, например фирма Tochikon , нанимают стеклодувов и делают глаза поразительно похожими на настоящие. То же самое происходит с языками, пастями. На российском рынке это просто кусок пластика, а на Западе продают сборные модели, где каждый элемент выполнен из своего материала — зубы, кожа, слизистые. Выглядит это намного натуральнее.

В некоторых странах Европы и в Америке существуют компании , которые занимаются посмертным увековечиванием домашних питомцев. Они не только изготавливают чучела, но используют и другие способы консервации тел животных. Например, можно заказать мумию своего любимца, её сделают с помощью технологии сублимационной сушки (англ. freeze-drying). Во время этого процесса низкие температуры воздействуют на тело питомца в вакуумной установке на протяжении долгого времени. Обычно это занимает около года для больших животных, например крупных собак, и трёх-шести месяцев для более мелких питомцев.

В планы Маргариты входит освоение этого пока нетронутого бизнес-сектора в России. Более того, она пытается усовершенствовать технологию, применяемую на Западе, и добиться ещё более естественного и «живого» вида питомцев после смерти. Она утверждает, что при использовании одной лишь технологии сублимированной сушки животные получаются «лупоглазыми», что вряд ли понравится клиентам. Поэтому она сейчас исследует комбинацию разных типов консервации, ищет подходящее оборудование в России и делает пробные образцы.

«Меня очень раздражает, что клиентов с запросом на домашних животных не считают ни за клиентов, ни за людей. Думают, что это городские сумасшедшие, у которых не всё в порядке с головой».

В своих постах в соцсетях Маргарита объясняет подписчикам, что они и их желания абсолютно нормальны, публикует фото своих работ, среди которых всё чаще встречаются чучела и скелеты домашних животных. Она хочет способствовать тому, чтобы таксидермия в России перестала обслуживать только интересы охотников и стала более инклюзивной услугой, к которой могут обращаться и владельцы почивших домашних животных. Присутствие любимого питомца в доме, пусть и в виде чучела, возвращает человеку покой, восстанавливает целостность его картины мира. Маргарита и её клиенты считают, что мемориальное увековечивание всегда присутствовало в человеческой культуре и должно со временем снова стать абсолютно естественным способом обращения с телом умершего.

«К сожалению, наше законодательство пока не позволяет нам изготавливать чучела из россиян. Если бы это было разрешено, клиентов у нас было бы очень много», — считает Маргарита.