Walking into Oracle Natural Science, it’s hard to ignore the overwhelming presence of death.
You’re greeted by rows of bird skulls, fur pelts, dried beetles and the preserved bones of muskrats, goats, snakes, chameleons and just about any other animal you can think of.
Yet, nothing about the store feels macabre. The skeletons are posed and ornamented with flowers and leaves. Tall windows brighten up every bone and illuminate each crystal. It’s less like a tomb and more like an art exhibit.
At the back of her Crossroads studio, owner Alessandra Dzuba, is using a hot air gun to primp and preen Mystic Pizza — a pet chicken who died earlier this year, and is now becoming a work of taxidermy.
“ She was very mystical,” Dzuba said. “She's still drying, but you basically spend hours fluffing up the feathers.”
Losing a pet is incredibly hard, and owners process their grief in different ways. For more than a decade, Dzuba has provided an alternative to the burial and cremation services most animals receive after dying.
Dzuba specializes in skeletal articulations: skeletons of animals that are cleaned, preserved and then posed. In her creations, which are sought out by pet owners across the country, Dzuba said she tries to “ encapsulate” a feeling of solace.
“Almost like a memento mori, almost like a shrine, but something that doesn't even brush the surface on how much those family members meant to us,” she said.
‘Just the next stage in their life’
Dzuba grew up in Montreal, where she loved touring insectariums and nature museums. She quickly became an animal rights activist and a vegetarian (she still doesn’t eat meat today).
She actually hated taxidermy as a kid.
“My uncle was a self-taught taxidermist. He had taxidermy through his whole entire house. I feel like I always tried to not make eye contact,” Dzuba said.
Her perspective changed when she began studying art at the University of Kansas. For her sketch assignments, Dzuba would station herself at KU’s natural history museum, where she could study the preserved animals up close.
“That's when you really learn that it's not so black and white. There's definitely a gray zone when it comes to taxidermy,” she said.
After college, Dzuba focused on fine art projects made from assemblages of ink, bones and other natural materials, which she would bring to shows and galleries across the country.
That got her into the world of skeletal articulations, and around 2015, a friend approached her with a personal request: Could Dzuba preserve their deceased cat, Big Boy?
“ They entrusted me with doing the articulation, and I was like, ‘Are you sure? Like, me?’” Dzuba said.
From there, Dzuba says things “snowballed.” She even preserved her own pet tarantula, Sable.
“The pet memorials are, I feel like, our version of wanting to connect with our own grief,” Dzuba said. “These are not the end, just the next stage in their life.”
One customer, Jess Ellis from Denver, approached Dzuba two years ago about her pet cat Theodore. She says he was stubborn but loving, and wanted to capture that spirit.
“ He had an attitude, but he was very sweet and lovey,” Ellis said of Theodore. “ He would sit next to my bed on my nightstand at whatever hour of morning if he wanted food and stare me down, and then just start systematically knocking things off the table until I woke up.”
Dzuba and Ellis worked together to come up with a pose that best suited Theodore. They decided to put him in a seated position with his head tilted down, as if he were glaring at you.
A ‘healing process’ of decomposition
Dzuba’s pet memorials are in such high demand that she is booked out more than two years in advance, and isn’t taking new submissions. So if you're thinking about doing this for your own pet, don't show up to the shop with a corpse in a shoebox.
It’s a long process, starting well before the animal passes away. Dzuba recommends pet owners have a storage plan for their pets so they can be frozen immediately.
Once the animal gets delivered to her studio, Dzuba removes its skin, fur and organs, getting as close to the bone as possible until she’s left with residual bits of ligament and tissue. To finalize the cleaning, she hands the project off to her team of helpers: Hundreds and hundreds of flesh-eating insects called dermestid beetles.
She pulled a large colony off the shelf to showcase, and as soon as she removed the lid, a waft of decay flooded the studio. Inside was a decomposing cat skeleton covered in beetles.
Dzuba has four colonies she uses, and says it’s the cleaning method that best retains the integrity of the bones.
“Usually what riles them up is some water,” Dzuba said. With a few spurts from a spray bottle, thousands of tiny legs start skittering across animal bone. “You can see the swarm happening.”
This step alone can take up to six months, depending on the size of the animal. But going slow and avoiding mistakes is crucial — after all, these are valuable objects.
“ I think a lot of people tend to think that we wave a magic wand, and now we have a finished project,” she said.
After the beetles pick the bones clean, Dzuba uses industrial-strength degreasers and hydrogen peroxide to dry and whiten them. Finally, she lines metal wires through the bones and finishes everything off with a layer of epoxy.
A smaller memorial starts around $120, while larger articulations can go up to $1,800. Dzuba also works on educating pet owners on how they can make their own mementos.
But Dzuba and Ellis are both well aware of the stigmas associated with pet preservation.
”I can completely respect anybody's opinion if they're like, ‘That's creepy, that's weird.’ Like, that's cool. It's not for you. A lot of us, it is for us, and we can differ on that,” said Ellis.
After Dzuba did an articulation for an internet-famous cat named Pot Roast, who died in 2022, the owner’s videos quickly filled with negative comments.
“There are a lot of people who come into the shop, they see the shelves of pets waiting to go home, and their immediate instinct is to say, ‘That's not for me,’” Dzuba said. “It's not for everyone, but for some people it's a beautiful way to continue on and honor their pets.”
For Ellis, Theodore’s articulation gave her a vehicle to continue expressing her love — and an arc for processing his death.
“ It's just such a beautiful healing process. It's very much an important thing to be able to hold onto those physical pieces,” said Ellis. “I'm a spiritual person as well, you can kind of feel his spirit in there.”
During Theodore’s time at Oracle, Ellis used the separation to get used to a house without his presence. Once she was ready for the next stage, Theodore returned home in his new state.
“ It wasn't even really like the grief came back,” Ellis said. “Of course there's that grief there, but it was just a nice celebration moment for me when he arrived. I was like, ‘Wow.’”
Ellis’ other cat, who grew up with Theodore, even took the time to reintroduce herself.
“You could kind of see recognition in her face, and she even kind of rubbed on his face.
It was so sweet.”
Ellis placed Theodore on her cabinet by the front door, where he would sit and wait for her to come home. Now, he greets her every day much the same as when he was alive.
