Taxidermist got her start at 13
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From
The Independent Tribune
March 14, 2004
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Amy Ritchie of Midland looks as normal and wholesome as apple pie and
country music, with long brown hair hanging past her waist a la Crystal Gale, a
perfect pink and white manicure, and sparkling metal braces smile.
But her own mother says the 17-year-old is - well - unusual. "She's always
been a weird kid. She never played with dolls. She never wanted a kitten...
When she was real young she watched '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' and
got obsessed with submarines" Lisa Ritchie said.
No, she's not your every day teenager. She's a home-schooled high school
senior, play-by-ear piano prodigy, Web page designer and licensed
professional award-winning taxidermist.
Amy got interested in taxidermy at the tender age of 13, when she happened
on a dead snake near her house.
"I didn't want to waste the skin, so I skinned it and turned it into a belt" she
said. After that she asked her father, Ned Ritchie, to keep an eye out for more
roadkill. She taught herself the art of taxidermy by practicing on rats she bred
herself to feed her ball python, Scales.
"I'd breed 50 or 60 at a time and them kill them all and freeze them, because
he doesn't mind if they're frozen".
How'd she kill them? "I snap their necks".
Amy won the National Taxidermists Association's small mammal national
champion award in Lousiville, Ky., last year with her tableau depicting a
mouse hunting a beetle. She beat out more than 15 adult professional
competitors for the honor.
Her father built her a shop behind their home after Amy's mom had enough of
Amy's working inside the house.
She keeps most of her prize mounts in the shop - including a rare white
Bengal-Siberian mixed tiger cub, which died of natural causes at three weeks
of age in a zoo somewhere, Amy said. A taxidermist friend sent it to her.
Beside that, a squirrel sleeps for eternity bedded down on fall leaves. Acorns
are scattered around it as it rests atop of a wood base with a brass plaque
attached that reads "Golden Slumbers".
On a shelf above is a small glass jar full of preserved snake heads in a liquid
solution. A chipmunk head is mounted to the lid. The the only creepy piece in
the shop, if you don't include a bucket filled with tanning solution in which
soaks a rabbit skin and a domestic roadkill cat pelt.
Oh, and there's also the cat paw key chains she sell on ebay.
"She gets some heat for some of that stuff," her mom said.
The Ritchies ignore most of the criticism Amy gets on her Website, but one
time her mother had to write a lady back who said that Amy was a weirdo
because she was homeschooled and that she shouldn't be making cat paw key
chains. Lisa Ritchie said she email the woman and told her to get a life. The
cats Amy works with are already dead, she said, so whats the harm?
The rest of the animals look as if they could just wake up and walk out the
door, excepting the large deer and pronghorn antelope, which are missing the
vital other ends required to do that.
Amy's not about creeping people out. What she likes is the finished product,
making the animals beautiful again for the rest of time.
"It's not really dealing with blood that I like. It's a process I have to go through
to get to the part I like - making the animal look pretty".
She said a strong stomach is one of her gifts. "The rest of my family is not like
that. Even my dad - he's a Marine and he can't handle some of the stuff I do".
Amy has all the professional tools of the trade in her shop - an airbrush,
Dremel, even a fleshing machine. The most difficult part of her job is using
the bone saw when she has to remove racks of antlers from the deer she is
mounting, she said.
She gets business frm across the country, thanks to her Website,
amystaxidermy.com, and thanks to the publicity her unusual hobby has gotten
her. She was featured in this month's issue of the National Rifle Association's
"American Hunter" magazine.
She even received a call from Jay Leno's people asking about her. They plan
to have her on the show sometime when they have just the right line-up of
other guests.
She'll make a good subject for the show. She has plenty of anecdotes about
her craft. "That skunk over there was sent to me over the summer," she said,
pointing out another of her preserved woodland creatures. "I felt sorry for the
mailman, because it smelled terrible."
Amy just got her first "real" rifle this year, a .22 Ruger. Prior to that she was
taking out squirrels with her high-powered air rifle and air pistol. She eats all
the squirrels she kills, too. "They're really quite good. They taste like chicken"
she said.
She mounts squirrel heads on wood plaques and sells them as novelty items on
Ebay. They usually go for about $50 each, but one time some buyers got in a
bidding war over one of them and it went for $150.
There are about $5 worth of materials in a mounted squirrel head, she said.
Her prices for mounts and other services are detailed on her Website. She's
doing well for someone in her first year of business, she said. She got five deer
heads and five bobcat orders in her first year as a professional.
The young entrepreneur says she plans to bypass college and go straight into
full-time taxidermy after she finished high school this spring. "I think that's the
best way I can put my time to use," she said.
Her mother would rather Amy put her "stomach of steel" to use as a surgeon.
Maybe even put her skills with animal beautification to use as a plastic surgeon
making people prettier.
But Amy's sure that taxidermy is her calling. She said she realizes that people
think her hobby-turned-avocation-turned-carreer is unusual. But she knows of
esveral girls, young women and grown women, who are taxidermists. The
difference between Amy and them is that most had fathers who are
taxidermists. Still, she says on her website that if she were a boy, people
wouldn't think her hobby was weird at all.
"I know several other girls who are interested in taxidermy and shotting. I love
taxidermy. I love to do shooting sports. But on the other hand, I'm all girl!".