By Virginia Winder

"This is the house of death," says taxidermist Richard Lee.

His welcome is not an over-statement.

Eight large heads of deer and mountain goats are mounted on the walls of the Kiwi-Candadian's lounge in east Taranaki.

At one end of the orange-and-brown '70s-style room is an alcove. In any ordinary farmhouse this space would feature a china cabinet or stereo system.

But in the Lee home, it's an exhibition space for the living dead.

"Once a taxidermist has preserved a dead animal it gets a new lease of life. You have to create that moment," Richard says.

Artist sets the scene

Still Life: Richard Lee's lounge in east Taranaki.

So he freeze-frames natural history to capture creatures in their prime of life. Like a badger, whose sharp-fanged snarl doesn't fit with storybook images. Or a deer head adorned with a fake grapevine, like an offering to Bacchus. Or a harrier hawk in full flight, a wee rabbit caught between its talons.

"It's still telling a story," Richard says. "It's not just a dead animal - you want it doing something."

He is big on placing animals in their "natural surroundings" by making scenes with branches, moss, bush and grass. "I am an artist," he says.

One masterpiece features an icon of North America.

"That's a black bear, but its cinnamon coloured, so it's rare," says Richard, talking in terms of scarcity, not the way he likes his venison burgers (lunch is later).

Richard shot the bear himself in Canada, his place of birth. The two cubs at its feet were bought from a Frenchman and "cost me an arm and a leg".

Foot in freezer

But it's not Richard's leg that is freeze-drying in a machine in the garage. It's from a bloke who lost it following a car crash and sought to have it preserved for posterity.

Freeze-drying Foot: Richard Lee says the owner of this leg has the right to choose what to do with it.

Blenheim man Allan Fagan tried a number of taxidermists, but they all told him he was crazy and wanted nothing to do with him.

Richard decided to go out on a limb and do the job. "It's his choice and he can do what he feels fit," he says of Allan.

In fact, Richard wonders if people will consider going even further. "Why bury them? Why not mummify people? I'm not sure if I would be interested in undertaking that business," he says.

Domestic animals are another matter. In the other chamber of the freeze-drier is a cat being processed for its Auckland owners. When they get it back, the dead pet will be so lifelike it will do everything but purr.

Freeze-dry detail

"Look at the detail," Richard says, holding a tiny dried lamb. He tilts it back, to reveal ridges on the roof of its mouth; taste-bud bumps on its tongue.

The woolly babe is one of two that sits beneath his video machine, as quiet as lambs.

He picks up the other, turns it over to reveal a greenish tinge to its coat.

When people ask Richard about the effectiveness of freeze-drying, it's this specimen he shows them. Before processing, the lamb had begun to decompose

Richard says the hi-tech method has not only preserved the animal, it has halted the disintegration of flesh. Stopped the rot.

Silent Lambs: Curled up in the video cabinet, these freeze-dried babies show the fine details of this preservation technique.

He turns to one of the freeze-dried mountain goat trophies on the wall.

"This is a Himalayan bull thar," he says, pointing out the fine details of eyelashes, nostrils, and inner mouth. "They are all original. You can't get that with traditional taxidermy. Some eyelashes and guard hairs burn off in the tanning process." 

Glimpse of Canada

Richard knows, because he has mastered that art too. He began in 1981 with a correspondence course and then spent a week working with historian Ron Lambert in the former Taranaki Museum, now Puke Ariki.

By 1985, he had become a professional taxidermist, which fitted perfectly with his outdoor lifestyle "I came down to New Zealand because of the hunting and fishing available," he says, his hybrid accent mixing a Kiwi bushman's blunt vowels with Canadian curls. Somehow he's managed to miss the classic "eh" that is typical of both.

In 1993, Richard had an exhibition at the New Plymouth-based museum. This was part of a six-month education programme, which enabled school children and visitors to see bears, elk and badgers. "I brought Canada to you." 

Snarling Badger: A piece of Canada in New Zealand.

Ron Lambert says there are two of Richard's freeze-dried specimens in the Puke Ariki collection - a kiwi and a snow-white Australian barn owl.

The latter was found dead in New Plymouth's Glenpark Avenue about 1997 and Richard was asked to preserve it.

Importance of stuffed animals

Puke Ariki's collection includes hundreds of other birds and animals that have been given new life through the traditional taxidermy process. Some are in storage, while a great many can be found in the Taranaki Naturally gallery.

Taxidermy has played an important part in recording the world's natural history. "Some of the birds and animals that were taken by (Captain James) Cook in his early voyages still survive in museums in Europe," Ron says.

"Some of them have been lost because of the conditions they were kept in in the 18th and 19th centuries."

But those still intact hold information about the past. "Biologically, they are very important specimens because they were often the ones that the species was described from," he says.

General museums in New Zealand no longer concentrate on collecting preserved specimens. That's because people prefer to see live birds in places like Tiritiri Matangi Island off Whangaparaoa Peninsula, Mount Bruce in the Wairarapa and Kapiti Island.

But Ron says there is still a place for stuffed or freeze-dried animals and birds. "The collections that are held, especially in the natural history museums, are increasingly important because of the rarity of these species in their natural habitats."

For museum visitors, seeing the actual animals also puts them in context. "Because you get an idea of the size," he says. "People are continually surprised by the size of a hare because they usually only see them in two-dimensions on the road."

Embracing sci-fi technique

Like Richard, the museum man sees the future of taxidermy heading towards the new technique.

"In many ways, freeze-drying is better for preserving the integrity of the animal," Ron says. "Scientifically, they are much more intact. It's much more likely you will be able to clone these things in the future and the organs are all still there, whereas with taxidermy you take them all out."

Richard is adamant that traditional taxidermy cannot compete with freeze-drying. But, like the introduction of the internet in 1989, some people see the technique as science fiction.

"They can't get their head around it," he says.

Put simply, the animal is frozen solid and the ice is turned into a gas, bypassing the liquid stage.

Richard learnt this method in 1990, while working with a taxidermist in Calgary, Canada. He has now pioneered freeze-drying in New Zealand and has worked with an engineer to design his own machines.

In his garage, Richard has two. One is of gleaming stainless steel and resembles a CT scanner or iron lung. The other looks like a cross between an aquarium and glass-front fridge.

The leg and the cat are in the see-through model.

Power House: This is the shed where it all happens - the freeze-drying, barbecuing, and work on trophy heads.

Not exactly the ideal backdrop for barbecuing venison patties - lunch for his guests. A huge hog's head ("that's what I've been working on today") watches the deer meat sizzle.

There are signs of dead animals everywhere in Richard's scrupulously clean home and shed. Deer antlers hang in the garage rafters, while inside, a jawbone (of something), sits amidst household items, including a smoke alarm and a can of flyspray.

A mount room filled with pale heads and torsos of deer, pigs and goats, is almost unseemly, like seeing naked mannequins in a shop window.

Mount Room: These models are used in traditional taxidermy.

Next to this is an entire room filled with more exotic animals, including a monkey and baby, a pronghorn antelope and an otter.

Inside the house are more remnants of lost lives. In the bedrooms, the duvets are made entirely of possum skin; each pest turned into a brick of brown and sewn together to form a wall of fur.

Growling and howling

Flat Out: This coyote skin, complete with head, comes from Canada.

On the floor of the spare bedroom is a black bear skin, arms and legs splayed, head thrown back in a final growl. Alongside is the howl; a coyote rug, muzzle to the ground, nuzzling carpet in a foreign land. 

Even Richard's furniture looks half alive, with tables hewn from massive macrocarpa trees. Table tops are sliced trunks, sanded to golden honey and placed on what appear to be trunks of smaller trees. If a cartoonist turned Fred Flinstone's stone-age furniture into wood, this is what they would look like.

The timber craftsman is Stratford's Ross Vivian, a man who had a load of wild pigs on his hands. "He had a freezer full of hog heads that he wanted done and I was on the bones of my arse," Richard says. "I had no furniture, so I did some taxidermy work in lieu of him doing some furniture for me."

In the kitchen, atop a pot-belly stove, a metal casserole dish spit-pops the fat and flesh of two dead ducks - Richard's dinner.

Turning vegetarian

Standing at the bench, Richard rubs blade against steel, a man used to butchering. "We always have sharp knives in this house," he says.

He goes out to the garage and returns with the barbecued patties. "I've made yours well done," he says to one of his visitors.

"I like mine dripping," he bites his burger with relish.

It's the deer on the wall watching.

After a few forced bites, swallowed with waning will, the burger lies still.

At least the stomach-churning visitor got to thank the kill, before pulling on fake cow coat, winding over east Taranaki hills and back to the living...