A big gray wolf bares its teeth at me. Next to it industrious beavers are preoccupied with building their dam, next to them a female fox plays with her pups, and above them a white-tailed sea eagle spreads its colossal wings. All these exhibits are from the unique and arguably the largest museum of its kind in Ukraine, the Flora and Fauna Museum in Radomyshl, Zhytomyr region, which has one of the best collections of stuffed animals in our country.
Three small halls contain dozens of stuffed animal species from Ukraine’s Polissia region: rabbits, wolves, raccoons, badgers, wild boars, deer, and elks. There are also some birds of rare beauty, which nowadays cannot be seen anywhere but in paintings.
“The museum was founded 40 years ago by Andriy Filipovych, the director of the forest enterprise, who was a great nature-lover and enthusiast,” says Lyudmyla Cheptsova, the curator of the exhibit. “All the exhibits were handmade by local amateur craftsmen. None of them had any special training. So the workers had to learn the secrets of taxidermy all by themselves.”
Serhiy Marchuk worked for the museum as a taxidermist, for more than 40 years until his death a few years ago. The forest enterprise was barely able to find another expert-the profession is exceedingly rare these days— and a thankless one, as making a stuffed animal is not one of the most appetizing.
“Our collection consists chiefly of animals shot by hunters,” says Pani Lyudmyla. “First, the taxidermist measures the dead animal, the length of its body, limbs, proportions, and so on. Then the carcass is skinned. The head is boiled down clean, only the skull remains. The skin should be washed, salted, and saturated with special toxic agents. A wooden frame makes a new skeleton, which is very difficult to make because all the proportions must be preserved. The skin is stuffed with sawdust in most cases; the forest farm has an abundant supply of it.”
I try to visualize the whole procedure of making a stuffed animal. The work is truly difficult. “And one that entails a lot of detail,” adds the museum manager, “because any negligence comes out, literally: badly made stuffed animals later shed their coats and get eaten by moths.”
Fortunately, the exhibits at the Radomyshl Museum are made professionally and with dedication. The gem of the display is a Crimean deer. According to Cheptsova, more than a quarter of a century ago 28 species were brought from the Crimea for breeding in Polissia. One deer that died on the way was immortalized by becoming one of the museum’s exhibits.
Another stunning display is the giant elk, a typical native of the surrounding forests. Each antler of this giant weighs more than 20 kilograms, so elks can barely bend their necks to get to the grass. They feed on leaves of shrubs. During Soviet rule, the meat of the local elks used to be exported. After the Chornobyl disaster this practice ended.
Tourists often visit the “fauna kingdom” on the outskirts of Radomyshl. What they see here is a real discovery for each of them. “They look alive!” visitors often exclaim while gazing at the stuffed animals. In answer to my question about whether there are any private orders for stuffed animals, the museum manager smiled, “People leave the hall so fascinated by the animals’ beauty that nobody even thinks about this.”
