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Burbank Taxidermist Preserves Lady Gaga’s Meat Dress

July 18, 2011 Leave a Comment
Lady Gaga wearing her infamous meat dress

It wasn’t enough that Lady Gaga chose to wear a dress made entirely of meat to the MTV Video Music Awards. But now the dress has been preserved by taxidermist Sergio Vigilato.

Vigilato was contacted by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum a couple of months after Lady Gaga wore the meat dress on stage in Sept. 2010, to accept the trophy for the year’s best music video at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Vigilato said, “The first thing I asked was, ‘Where is the dress? This thing could have maggots by now.’  I understood them to say it was in a room with air conditioning. I said make sure it’s in a freezer.”

The dress was in fact frozen stiff — and free of maggots — when it was delivered to Vigilato’s taxidermy shop, but as he defrosted it, Vigilato discovered that the dress had started decomposing … Read the rest »

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California Man Sentenced for Selling Mounts of Endangered Species

July 18, 2011 Leave a Comment
A bald eagle was among the endangered and protected species that Dickson offered for sale on CraigsList

A Pacifica, California, man has been sentenced to six months in prison for using CraigsList to sell taxidermy mounts of a Siberian tiger, a polar bear, a black panther, and other endangered species.

James Dickson, 57, pleaded guilty in April to a felony count of illegal trade of protected wildlife. He will begin serving his sentence Aug. 11, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said at a hearing Tuesday in San Francisco. Dickson was also ordered to pay $2,200 in restitution to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Dickson admitted that he sold a mounted American bald eagle to an undercover U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent for $2,200 in November 2009, after the agent contacted Dickson about a CraigsList ad in which Dickson offered a stuffed polar bear for $6,500. Dickson offered to sell the agent the mounted polar bear, a stuffed black bear, and the eagle, and said he knew that … Read the rest »

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Stuffed With Memories

July 17, 2011 Leave a Comment

Growing numbers of pet owners are having their late pets stuffed for posterity.

When Yvonne Rodriguez’s dog Muneca died six years ago, she didn’t want to say goodbye, so she paid $800 to get her pet stuffed at a San Antonio taxidermy studio.

“I didn’t want to go without seeing her so I had her stuffed, and when it’s time for me to go, she’s going to be going with me,” says Rodriguez.

“We’ve gotten iguanas, lizards, birds, parrots, cats… multiple times we’ve gotten cats,” said Bradley Garcia of Ottea’s Taxidermy. Garcia said he doesn’t get many requests to skin, tan, mount, and dry domestic animals, and that recreating a family member is not easy. “We know our artwork into [pets] may be different from your animal, since you’re with it daily. We don’t know what the pet looks like, like you do, you know, the facial expressions, what your … Read the rest »

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