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Vice Blog

OUR BEAR IS HERE

This morning, Juice Box, the Vice Salesbear arrived at his new home to watch peacefully ferociously o'er our ad team.

Here's a little chat with his taxidermist for you to read while we try to scare up an XXXL guyabera.

Associate Publisher/Third Gunman John Martin flagging down JB's Hummer.

Vice: Can you just briefly walk us through the journey from dead bear in the woods to Juice Box?
Frank: Sure. In Alaska, after they skinned and salted the bear skin, they dried it and took it to a tanner or fur dresser. What the tanner does is the same process someone would use to make like a leather coat or anything--it's like a big fur coat, which is actually what we received. Then we take that skin and we soak it in water and we measure it so we can tell exactly how big this bears body was, then we make a mannequin for it. Once it's all fitted we go through and sculpt the body form. All the face and the muscles are sculpted, the eyes are glass, and the jaw set is a reproduction of a medium-sized grizzly bear's jaw.

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Frank J Zitz, of Frank J. Zitz & Company Fabricated Reproductions

Do you have to order all this stuff from specialty stores or do you make it yourself?
There are supply companies or museum companies that build them from castings. We get all those parts, we assemble it. The bear skins get sewn over and glued down with water-soluble glue to the form. Then we attach it to the habitat. The rocks are all done with a wooden framework, then wire with plaster and mache over it. The moss that you see here, this is all treated so it never really gets dried out. It stays crisp.

So it's real moss?
Real moss, real leaves, real everything else and then they're all just put in place and glued down.

And Juice Box.

How long did the whole thing take once you received the skin?
You guys came in with this at a perfect time because usually return time is about six months. This was right before a big project we're doing and it was extra-good timing because it came in with the fur already dressed. Normally when people ship us things they're all salted and dried, then we have to take them to the tanner's and we'll receive them back like three to four months later. We send them huge loads of stuff, like 500 or 1000 different skins at a time.

That's a lot of fuzzy wittle critters.
I know you wouldn't think there'd be so much taxidermy, but it's actually a really big business. A lot of our customers we see them once a year, and get their whole load.

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What's the big project our bear slid in right in front of?
We're shooting a pilot for National Geographic where we taxidermize an elephant.

Whoa, how long does that take?
The elephant's much more involved because their skin shrinks like 20%. If you look at an elephant closely they have very, very deep wrinkles and a personal tan, and all that fans out. So when we mount them we have to pin it all back in place and the elephant has like 3000 pins on each side. It's crazy tight. It's like a big grid and then it all shrinks down and we have to pull them and reset them all again. Elephants are time-consuming projects.

Welcome to the family, JB.

By the by, if you haven't seen how we first met Juice Box, check out the first edition of Far Out. But be warned, it's a little grisly.

New episodes of Far Out are on the way, so there should be new additions to the Vice sales menagerie soon.