I first became interested in taxidermy when I was a child, after seeing a photograph in an old Life magazine of the last passenger pigeon, Martha, who died in 1914. It was the first time I had encountered the idea of extinction so directly. I was terribly saddened by this discovery that an entire species could disappear. Martha was preserved and now resides at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This led me to see taxidermy as a way to encounter the past and see the beauty of what has been lost.

As I grew up, my passion for the natural world continued to grow. I love the beautiful dioramas created by Carl Akeley, the father of modern taxidermy, and