 Hi, my name is Mariana Di Giacomo, and today I'm going to be talking to you about wet solvage of taxidermy mounds. And this can happen after a hurricane, a flood, or any other water event that you may live through. And you may have these gorgeous mounds in your house that can be memories of a hunting trip, or can be... sometimes people taxidermy their pets. And the goal for this video is to protect them so that if they are wet after an event like this, you can continue to enjoy these mounds in your house. So first things first, you need to protect yourself. Why is that? Because taxidermy mounds historically have been made using some materials that are quite dangerous. For example, arsenic, mercury, lead. And this is not to scare you. This is actually to empower you because knowing that this can be a problem will actually let you understand how to work with these mounds, not get hurt, but at the same time, save them. So ideally, if we were working in these conditions, a water event, I would be wearing a mask, especially because in those instances, if it's too cold and too humid, we can have a lot of mold. And so you need to protect yourself. And if we were going into a house that is still flooded and there's a lot of taxidermy, I don't know what's in that water. And so a lot of the times, a good idea would be a Tyvek suit, good boots also, so that you can protect your skin from any of these hazardous materials. So what I am going to be wearing today are gloves because they are your first line of defense against anything that could be on these mounds. So when you're looking at them and you're seeing them in such a bad state, you may want to rush and get them out of the water and protect them right away. I would recommend you not to do that. I would recommend you take a lot of photos first, document everything that's going on, and make very conscious decisions about how you're going to lift everyone of these and how you're going to move them and where you're going to put them in. So the first thing is to line any tables that you may have with towels or with a tarp or anything so that you can bring the taxidermy to those tables and set it down. And whenever you're moving any of the taxidermy, you have to think how you're going to be moving it, especially for example, if a mount has been in water for several days, some of the adhesives, the glues that were used, or sometimes even the skin, can gelatinize and then things were going to start failing. And so it is very important for you to be very aware of those things before you even lift anything. And you should look for any cracks or any issues on the bases. If they have bases or if they're wall mounts and they have a frame, you have to be mindful of those things as well. And once you can bring the taxidermy, also you have to be careful. In this case, we have small mounts, but you may have a whole bear in your house. How are you going to move that? You can't do that by yourself. You're going to need help. Or maybe you have a bird that has open wings and you have to be careful about moving that bird around the house through smaller doorways or things like that so that you can actually bring it to safety. And again, very, very careful about mold. Create our circulation, bring fans in so that you can get any mold out of the house, but also you can prevent any mold from growing if it hasn't started to. So once we bring the mounts, first thing is, are they wet? How can we tell if the mounts are wet if we are wearing gloves? Sometimes if you touch it, you will see if your glove is wet. But if you can't, the best thing is to use the paper towel. So you're going to actually touch the mount with a towel. And if you see that the towel is wet, then your taxidermy is wet. And unfortunately, we have to start drying it. So you bring it to the surface, you're very careful. And sometimes you may use trays for smaller mounts so that you can carry them a little bit safely so that they are not damaged. But sometimes if they're in water, you may have this situation in which they are just pouring down water. And the best thing to do is to take them out of that situation and lay them down on a towel so that they can dry. In the case of this fish, we can see that both the head and the tail are lifted up. And if this has been in water for a long time, these shaves may start to go down. And so my recommendation is to use absorbent materials and place them under this so that it will not lose its shape. So you can just roll the towel and make it fit with that. And actually, you can see right now that this moves. So it's in a very delicate situation. And so the best thing is to try to give it some sort of a scaffold so that nothing happens. And once this situation is set, you cannot just go away and wait. What you have to do is check that this doesn't get soaking wet because if it does, then we're still in a very wet environment and we can damage these mounts. So what you do is you take this away and then you grab a new one and we start over until when you take them out, they're dry, which means that these mounts are no longer soaking water. The other thing is if these mounts were in a very wet environment that was very muddy as well, what you can do very gently is if there's like big pieces of mud that are stuck on the skins, you would grab some clean water, not this one. And wet a sponge, wring it, and then remove the mud very, very gently. And don't try to clean it. This is not the purpose at the moment. The purpose right now is to actually remove the chunks of mud that may be on the mount. And once this happens, you have good air circulation. You're switching all these drying materials. All you have to do then is let this happen and wait. So now you're dry. How do you know? You test with your paper towel. So if you're dry and the mounts are stable, so we remove any sort of scaffolding and things are fine, what do you do? So the first thing is to try to clean some of these mounts in a very, very gentle way. How do we do that? For example, you can grab a gentle brush and brush the surface to see if any of the dirt can come off very easily. Also, you can use some cotton swabs to clean the bases, but always dry. Do not bring any water again into these mounts. Another friend are cosmetic sponges, the ones that you can use to apply makeup. They are fantastic to just very gently dab on the surface and make sure that you are doing some of this cleaning. When you're working on a mount that is like fish or something like that, you have to be very careful with the scales. When you're working with a mammal, the hair can start pulling and so you also have to be very careful not to go against the hair. So just dab very gently and never go against that grain. And if you have a lot of just loose debris, what you can do is use a vacuum cleaner that is a very, very gentle vacuum cleaner, not something that is industrial and cheesecloth. Why do we need cheesecloth for? You will cover the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner so that no hair, no feathers and none of the small decorations that sometimes taxidermy have can go into the vacuum cleaner and then you're just like trying to find it inside the bag. So cheesecloth is a fantastic friend to avoid any of those issues. Another thing that you have to be very careful about is sometimes when these things have been wet for a while, you may have any wires or things coming out that may have rusted. So again, protect yourself, be very careful, always document the process in every single stage so that you can see how things are changing, especially if you're not used to seeing taxidermy wet. You don't know what is happening. Just take a lot of photos and document the whole process and you can start then to very gently work with your taxidermy mount and make it beautiful again. But sometimes you don't feel confident about doing this yourself and that is okay. You're not necessarily a taxidermist or a conservator like me. And so what do you do? Well, you can go to culturalheritage.org and go to find a professional. And there you will find someone who is in your area and they will help you. First of all, sometimes just guide you through the process or you may bring the mount to them or they may come to you. But also you can find local museums or collections and ask for help in those places. So you need to know that you're not alone and that working with taxidermy is not easy. So getting help is always a good idea. How do we prevent this from happening in the future again? So one thing to keep in mind is if you know that there is a water event coming, one good idea would be to make sure that none of your mounts are at floor level. So keep them raised. And another option is to, if they are by a window, move them out of the way so that if that window breaks and the glass breaks and then you can have glass over the mount and it's all wet and it's very dangerous, just move them out of there. And so that will help you a lot. If your mounts are stored in a wall, what you can do is grab plastic and you can just wrap the plastic around them to protect them from any water coming in. But that also can happen if you have a big mount that is hard to move and it's right next to a window. Just cover it in plastic and prevent any of the water from touching the skin. And then another thing is take a lot of photos. Document everything because what if you need help? What if you need to bring a conservator in? And having photos of how that taxidermy looked before this water event is going to be extremely useful for this professional to help you bring it back to life once more.