A pet’s death doesn’t mean goodbye, thanks to this rogue taxidermist

Herman, a preserved rabbit of professional magician Lindsey Noel. — Photos: Tribune News Service

Krusty Noodles was a killer.

No bird, no bunny, no backyard rodent stood a chance when this feline assassin was on the prowl. But to Krusty’s humans, he was a lover – a cuddler, an ear licker. And when the cat’s nine lives were up, his people could barely bear to say goodbye.

“I was saying, ‘I wish we could keep him forever,’” said artist Kate Swan, who lives in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the United States.

That gave Swan’s husband an idea.

Krusty Noodles’ hunter spirit now lives on – his head and paws mounted with a dead mouse clutched triumphantly in his kitty teeth for all posterity.

“It’s the centerpiece over my table. It really is the showpiece of my home,” Swan said. “I know that’s insane, but it’s like, ‘Ah, Krusty, what a champ’.”

“Beth did such a great job.”

Kate Swan and her preserved cat, Krusty Noodles, in her home in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the United States. Krusty Noodles was a beloved but fierce hunter cat, now mounted in the dining room.

That’s Beth Beverly, 46, proprietor of Diamond Tooth Taxidermy. An artist by training, the Delco native entered this ancient craft to pursue beauty, not pet preservation. But along the way Beverly found a calling that allows her to be of service to others at a vulnerable time.

“If I can provide them with a tangible token to move through their grief, that’s what I want to do,” Beverly said.

Her pet-preservation skills have seen increased demand, a trend reflected worldwide. Between increases in pet ownership and pet spending, particularly in developed nations, the global pet-preservation market, valued at US$87.6mil (RM415mil) in 2022, is projected to surpass US$111.4 mil (RM528mil) by 2031, according to Astute Analytica, a global market research company.

Pet preservation now takes up the bulk of Beverly’s practice, followed by couture and decorative work, including jewellery and furniture. Hunter’s trophy work isn’t really her thing, but when she does it, she said, she makes a point of eating at least some of the animal to honour it. She has sampled coyote and fox.

Some of taxidermy’s old guard frowns on pet preservation. “They feel if you’re doing dogs and cats, you’re cheapening the art,” she said.

But Beverly isn’t the old guard. She’s a member of MART – the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. A group with national members, its name speaks for itself.

Art to taxidermy

Taxidermy wasn’t always the plan. After high school, Beverly studied jewellery design at the Tyler School of Art. She also went to circus school to train on the trapeze. For a time, she found employment as a simulated patient for medical training.

While working as a window dresser for Daffy’s, the now-defunct discount retailer in Center City, Beverly started noticing dead birds during her lunch breaks.

Beth Beverly sews a cat’s tail for a client in her workspace in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, the United States.

“It broke my heart that they were just going to either rot on the sidewalk or get stepped on, so I just started picking them up and taking them home,” Beverly said.

There she would remove a wing, marvel at its beauty and think: “Wouldn’t that be pretty in my hair?”

So she got a book on taxidermy from the library and tried to teach herself. Family and friends were unfazed.

“They were basically like, ‘Oh that Beth. This is her next thing’.”

But it was much more than that.

So Beverly enrolled in Bill Allen’s Pocono Institute of Taxidermy. At first, she did some trophy mounts for hunters, but she always gravitated towards fanciful creations. She made hats with birds and squirrels and all sorts of feathers, and wore them to equestrian events like the Devon Horse Show. That got her notice and commissions.

One of those creations – a friend’s deceased dog in a tiara and cape on a velvet pillow – won an avant-garde taxidermy contest in Brooklyn. That opened doors. She was invited to do an AMC taxidermy reality show, Immortalized. The Netflix series Stranger Things needed some ethically sourced squirrels, so the prop manager came to her. HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones also hired her.

She’s given lectures and workshops on taxidermy at the University of the Arts, the Wagner Free Institute of Science, and New York’s Morbid Anatomy. She’s done work locally for the Franklin Institute and the Academy of Natural Sciences and as far away as a hunting exhibit in Transylvania.

Three freezers and a sense of honour

But pet preservation – also called “companion aftercare” – is what commands most of her efforts now. At any given time, she has three freezers full of deceased critters at her Elkins Park home.

Hers is intimate work, and Beverly takes the faith people put in her seriously.

“I love that people trust me,” said Beverly, who would like to be a death doula for humans in the future. “It’s a great honour.”

Kaya Tinsman’s dog Rothko’s death at age 12 was a great loss for the Perkasie artist.

“He was with me through breakups and relationships and when I was living on my own for the first time,” Tinsman, 39, said. “He was my rock. He was my soulmate.”

Like all the animals Beverly preserves, the dog had to be frozen as soon after death as possible. Tinsman still recalls how kind Beverly was, letting her reschedule saying goodbye to Rothko’s body multiple times.

“We had it planned, but I wasn’t ready,” said Tinsman. “She was just very patient and accepting of my grieving process.”

The work Beverly does is as individual as the animals and their people’s relationships with them. Often her clients will just want a part of their pet as a keepsake.

“I’ll ask clients, ‘What part of your cat or dog do you cherish the most? Do you like to hold their paws? Do you like the way their tail wags? Do you like how their ears flop?’” she said.

Even when she preserves the whole animal, her goal is to try to capture the animal’s spirit.

When Bensalem tattoo artist Alexandra Fische, 34, brought her pet rat Bijoux to Beverly to be preserved, “I just told her she was my spoiled little princess.”

Bijoux now stands on a purple velvet pillow Beverly sewed for her. She wears a tiara and rings on her paws that Beverly made for her. Her nails are polished.

Bijoux (left) and Creature are preserved rats created by taxidermist Beth Beverly for Alexandra Fische. They are on display in her tattoo studio in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, the United States.

Professional magician Lindsey Noel’s rabbit Herman had quite a personality. When he died, Noel, 38, told Beverly, “He was always a fancy little man.”

Stuffed Herman now wears a jaunty top hat and carries a cane, residing on the piano in Noel’s Cobbs Creek home.

Lindsey Noel, a professional magician, with her preserved pet rabbit, Herman, at her home in Cobbs Creek, Philadelphia, the United States.

“I like seeing him in my life still,” she said. “He was such an important part of the formative years of my life, and having him here as I grow and move forward is kind of beautiful. It’s a part of my old life that I’ve carried into this next chapter.”

The pet owners who turn to Beverly say there is solace in having part of their animal still with them.

Mars Orathshei, 27, and Rio, his American Eskimo dog/Pomeranian mix, had been constant companions since Orathshei was a young teen. The little dog’s favourite spot was riding draped across Orathshei’s shoulders.

When Rio died last year, Orathshei, who had researched taxidermists, sent his dog to Beverly from his home in Wisconsin.

Rio’s soft, white coat has been made into a shawl-like mantle. A neckpiece of Rio’s jaw and teeth complete the memorial.

“The one time he felt safe was when he was up on my shoulders,” Orathshei said.

Orathshei, a manager for an insulation company, said he hasn’t felt ready to wear the mantle yet. But the time will come.

“I feel like I’m going to come home from work one day, and I’m going to sit down and put it on and kind of think about everything.”

Once upon a time, Zuleyka Polanco, 34, never thought she would consider taxidermy for a pet.

“I was like, ‘No way, I would never do that. That’s so weird. I couldn’t bear to see my pet like that.’ But,” she added, “you never know how you’re going to react to something until it happens.”

What happened is her husky Keeko got sick and died young. Beverly prepared the dog’s skull, which is now part of a meditation area in Polanco and her partner’s Willingboro home. They keep Keeko’s fur in a woven basket.

“Mostly when I’m by myself in the house, I will sometimes open him up and pet him, rub on the ear,” the Amazon fleet manager said. ”Seeing him there brings me some kind of peace because I feel like I’m still taking care of him.”

Kate Swan didn’t immediately warm to the idea of taxidermy for Krusty Noodles, her family cat, when her husband first suggested it.

“I was like, ‘That’s disgusting! I just want his memory in my head. I don’t want the cat carcass. It’s a parade of death.’ I was just appalled.”

But her husband really liked the idea, so she started telling Beverly, a fellow artist she already knew, about her irrepressible hunter cat.

Now Krusty presides over the family’s dining room, prey and all.

“When my husband’s friends come over, they literally say, ‘What the [expletive]? Is that a real cat? And I tell them the story, and they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s so cool.’”

And more often than not, that leads to funny Krusty stories, in death as in life.

“It’s such a comfort,” Swan said. “I love my taxidermy cat.” – Tribune News Service/The Philadelphia Inquirer/Rita Giordano