It was no puppy love between Ed Skurka and Alpha. Their relationship would last through 11 years of flea baths, heartworms and chewed-up slippers, in time growing deeper than even the holes Alpha dug in his pal’s flower garden.
“We were the classic boy and his dog story,” says Skurka, a West Palm Beach resident who renovates houses for a living. “We were together 24 hours a day, every day for 11 years. Alpha went to work with me. He went on vacations with me. I teach Sunday school, and he would even come to my classes with me.”
But like many love stories, theirs would come to a tragic end. A brain tumor took the life of the black-and-white Great Dane on Nov. 24, 1986.
Skurka, however, would keep the rest of his faithful companion — right next to his living room easy chair.
“I loved that animal so much that I wanted to keep him forever,” he says, getting misty at Alpha’s memory. “So I had him stuffed.”
Don’t laugh. Roy Rogers did it to Trigger. Gene Autry did it to Champion. And thousands of other pet owners are doing the same — preserving their dearly departed critters for all eternity, by way of the local taxidermist.
“Ever since pet cemeteries have been accepted by the general population, it seems more and more people want to have their pets mounted,” says Sandy Vaughn, who with her husband operates Jamar Taxidermy in Fort Lauderdale, one of the few local taxidermy services that preserves household pets.
“It probably started when Roy Rogers had Trigger mounted, but in the last couple of years, we’ve gotten many more requests from people wanting to have their pets mounted — everything from dogs and cats to parrots, ferrets, snakes, rabbits and even turtles.”
There was the kitty whose owner wanted to remember her feline the way it spent most of the day — curled up in a basket. “Years from now, the basket will be gone, but her cat will last forever,” Vaughn says.
And the cocker spaniel whose owner wanted his best friend preserved as if it were begging for dinner. “The owner asked that we mount the dog with the same expression he had looking through the sliding glass door in the kitchen — which is difficult considering we never saw the dog alive,” she adds.
And the mixed breed whose owner was moving out of South Florida and didn’t want to leave his pooch behind. “He gave us the reason we most frequently hear — he didn’t want his dog alone in the cold ground.”
Even someone’s pet mountain lion was mounted to match new rugs in the living room. “The owner had us replace the natural eye color with the same blue color in the carpets.”
Sandy and Jim Vaughn, a taxidermist for more than 40 years, get dozens of requests a month to “mount” or “preserve” pets — the correct terms for what many call “stuffing” a beast.
“A lot of taxidermists won’t do pets because they believe you can never get the exact expression the pet would have,” says Robin Davis, owner of Marine Taxidermy of the Palm Beaches, which will not mount household pets. “It’s like mounting a child. People get so attached to their pets that it’s something you don’t want to fool with.”
That’s why only about half of the nation’s 40,000 taxidermists will mount household pets, says William Lee Birch, president of the National Taxidermist Association in Cleveland. Twenty years ago, it was almost unheard of for a taxidermist to preserve a pet.
And then Trigger came — or rather, left — sparking a new trend.
“Roy Rogers loved Trigger more than any man could love any pet, and it was because of this love that he had Trigger preserved — to preserve the memory,” says Donna Feix of the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville, Calif., the 30,000-square-foot showplace where a mounted Trigger is displayed with wife Buttermilk (Dale Evans’ horse); son Trigger Jr.; and Bullet, the Rogers’ faithful dog.
“People come from all over the country to see Trigger and the others. In fact, they are probably the reason most people come. A few may think it’s gross, being that they’re mounted and all, but I’d say 99 percent think it’s great. It makes people remember.”
And it makes taxidermists work harder, another reason why many will not mount pets. Since mounting pets involves working from scratch — rather than using the ready-made foam molds used on most animals (the skins are removed from the animal and applied to the mold) — mounting a household pet can be costly and time-consuming.
“It takes at least twice as long to preserve a pet,” says Jim Vaughn, who is currently working on three dogs and three cats. “With wild animals, the form is already made. There’s no personality. With pets, you have to make a plaster mold right over the body. You have to put the ribs in, the veins in. Every part of the body except for the eyes is the pet’s — nails, nose, everything. And everything has to be exactly the same or the owner will immediately notice it.”
That’s why it can take up to six months to mount a pet, compared to the more typical two months for “traditional” animals. But the work must be started within hours after the animal dies.
“If you start at the right time, there’s no bad smell — it’s no worse than the smell of a butcher shop,” he says. “If you wait too long, you just can’t do it.”
Prices start at $500 for a small cat and $1,800 for a large dog — money well spent to grieving pet owners.
“A few people are a little hestitant to accept what I did, especially with Alpha standing right there by my easy chair,” says Skurka, 40. “Occasionally, they’ll say things like ‘How can you do that?’ But most of my friends think of it as a great tribute to a great friend.
“Alpha was my best friend, and when he died, I cried for days. When I saw the beautiful work Jim Vaughn did on Alpha, I cried for another two days. That’s because I wanted to build a monument for him because he meant so much to me. And now, I feel that I’ve been able to do that.”
