Vermont’s largest taxidermy collection needs a new home.
The owners of the more than 600 stuffed birds and animals lost the lease on the building where the specimens have been on display in Marlboro, and as they scramble to find a climate-controlled building to store the specimens, the future of the collection is very much up in the air.
The taxidermy collection was put together by a guy named Luman R. Nelson, who lived in nearby Winchester, New Hampshire.
Nelson was a citizen naturalist. He wasn’t connected to a university, and he didn’t make a lot of money as a taxidermist, but in the early 1900s he preserved hundreds of local birds and mammals in his studio.
The collection ended up on Route 9 in Marlboro at the end of Nelson’s life, in the early '60s, when Vermont’s ski industry was booming, and the owner of the Hogback Mountain ski resort was expanding his tourist empire, which would come to be billed as quote, “the biggest little area in New England.”
“Nelson got special permission from U.S. Fish and Wildlife to basically collect anything he wanted to, something that would be pretty much impossible to do today,” said Ed Metcalfe, who purchased the collection in 1996, for $56,000. “And I don’t think anyone would want to do it today. But, it was really considered an OK and normal thing to do back in the Victorian era, and into the earlier part of the 20th century.”
When Metcalfe purchased the taxidermy collection, about 30 years later, it was on display, but stacked up tightly in the back of the gift shop.
“I think what I love about it is that you can see nature up close. You can see items in a way that I think connects you to them in a different way. And I’ve always felt that if people can see some of these animals close up, that would help develop a connection."Ed Metcalfe, board member of the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum
Metcalfe renovated the nearby Marlboro Inn, which closed after the ski area shut down, and opened the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum, finally giving the Luman Nelson taxidermy collection the space he says it deserved.
And he says, it fulfilled the dream he had, ever since running around the woods in northern New Jersey where he grew up, collecting turtle shells and deer antlers.
“I knew about this collection, and I said, ‘Wow. I can really do what I always wanted to do as a kid and run a natural history museum,’” Metcalfe said. “That’s really what it came down to. It was like if you picked the thing you want to do when you were kid, but really got away from, this was it.”
The glass display cases, each built by Nelson, are spread out on three floors of the building, and each display case tells its own story.
In one, a family of American bitterns protects a nest, positioned among reeds and sand along the shores of Lake Champlain.
In another, almost two dozen starlings appear to flitter among a tree branch; preening their wings, dangling a worm for a chick and getting ready to take flight.
There’s a Canadian lynx stalking prey, an albino gray squirrel climbing a tree and bald eagles in varied stages of maturity.
They have three birds that have become extinct: the passenger pigeon, Eskimo curlew and heath hen.
Metcalfe says the collection, and the experience of getting close to species, some of which are no longer on our planet, is more important today as climate change and other environmental disasters threaten the natural world.
“I think what I love about it is that you can see nature up close,” Metcalfe said as he gave a tour of the museum recently. “You can see items in a way that I think connects you to them in a different way. And I’ve always felt that if people can see some of these animals close up, that would help develop a connection. That’s really my motivation was to try to get young people, but any age, be able to see stuff and grow in appreciation, and from that want to see it preserved.”
The museum only charged $5 for adults, and Metcalfe says it's never been a money-maker, but through the years they have been able to keep the doors open.
That is until last summer, when the historically rainy season caused water to run into the building, triggering a black mold outbreak.
Then the group found out that the owner of the building did not want to renew the lease, and they have to be out before the end of this month.
The nonprofit group that runs the museum, and which owns most of the collection at this point, are close to finalizing a deal to store the collection in a building owned by the town of Heath, Massachusetts. Metcalfe says it is likely that the collection will be stored away into the near future.
“Personally I would feel gutted if something happened to them,” said Sara Helms Cahan, a professor in the biology department at University of Vermont and the curator of the university’s Thompson Zoological Collection. “Those specimens are a time machine to the past. We don’t actually have real time machines, but they are a representation of the life on this earth that we can’t go back and recollect. When you throw something away, it is permanent, and there’s no way to get that back.”
“Those specimens are a time machine to the past. We don’t actually have real time machines, but they are a representation of the life on this earth that we can’t go back and recollect.”Sara Helms Cahan, UVM biology professor
Helms Cahan says there’s a debate in the museum community about the true value of taxidermy in educational displays.
Taxidermy can be seen as an old and dusty tradition that can’t reach today’s children who are used to high-tech virtual experiences.
But Helms Cahan says there’s no substitute for getting up close to marvel at the size of a mature loon, or gawk at the talons of a bald eagle.
“I think we deceive ourselves if we think that the virtual experience is a real substitute for that kind of physical engagement with objects,” she said. “Taxidermy provides that opportunity for real close observation that you wouldn’t otherwise get.”
It’s going to be huge job to transport 130 heavy wood and glass cases, while protecting the specimens inside.
Metcalfe says the museum board wants to start a capital campaign, and raise money to build a new museum for the collection.
It’s an ambitious dream, he admits, but one worth pursuing as the threats to our natural world only intensify.
Have questions, comments, or tips? Send us a message.
_
