Taxidermist Tim Bovard, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
By Tim Bovard; Julie Schlosser

(FORTUNE Magazine) – I used to wander the halls of this museum as a kid. I was always fascinated by the animals. When I was 9 or 10 I borrowed some books from a friend of my dad's that taught you how to preserve different types of animals. The first animal I ever mounted was a roadkill skunk.

In the old days, before I got here, the standard way to get animals was to go out and collect them in the wild. Now, by and large, I work on things that are picked up as roadkill or sent by zoos or the Department of Fish and Game. They're called "salvaged specimens."

A little hummingbird takes less than a day to do, but the skin is really delicate. And you've really got to know what you're doing to work with something like a rhinoceros or an elephant that has a tough skin. The most time-consuming, from an effort standpoint, was a male silverback gorilla I did for an exhibit a number of years ago. Occasionally I'll get comments like, "I don't like looking at dead animals." But that's the only way that anyone who doesn't have a lot of money to travel is going to see that kind of animal. --Interview by Julie Schlosser