Hi I was wondering what kind of preservative you use for wet specimens? Like what’s that watery stuff that the animal’s in? I’m kinda new to this whole thing
Hey there friend!!!
So wet specimens are preserved in isopropyl alcohol!!! I use 70% which is just the standard and will work for what you need to do!!!
If you aren’t super familiar with the process, what I did was I washed the specimen. This isn’t required unless they’re dirty, of course!!!
Then, I went to Walgreens and asked for a syringe. This step may not be necessary, but I like to be safe rather than sorry!!! Ask them for a small one, they’ll usually ask you what it’s for and you can just let them know it’s for taxidermy!!! The lady who gave me the syringe asked me to bring it back in to show her CBKGE!!! She was friendly!!!
Anyway!!! Fill your container with a bit of alcohol, not too much until you put your specimen inside!!! You’re going to want to fill your specimen with alcohol with that syringe!!! We do this to make sure that there’s no issues with decay starting on the inside, and I’m sure it’ll help to make sure they don’t float at the top (because of the gasses stored in the body)!!!
So, places you’ll want to poke:
-Throat or mouth!!! If you can’t open the mouth, stick the syringe into the throat a bit so you can get the alcohol into their tummy!!!
-Under the ribs on both sides!!! You want to do this so it gets to the heart and all of the other organs!!!
-Temples (on it’s head)!!! You do this to get alcohol to the brain!!!
If any of their guts or entrails are out, do not poke them!!! Just set them in the jar and fill it all the way with alcohol and secure the lid!!! You never want to poke any of the guts because gasses build up in them and it will smell AWFUL!!! DO NOT POKE THEM NSKJFBWEKF, especially the stomach or intestines!!!
I hope this was helpful!!! That’s the process I used for the possum, although you can skip them with some others, like if you find a tiny baby bird, just pop em into a small jar with some alcohol and it’ll all sink into it!!!
If you have any other questions, totally just hit me up, thank you so much for askin!!! I love taxidermy a lot!!!