‘The Stuffa’ taxidermist: I’ve ‘thrown chickens’ between Angelina Jolie’s legs on set and made a roller-skating alpaca

An animal handler and taxidermist who has “thrown chickens” between Angelina Jolie’s legs on the set of Tomb Raider and created a roller-skating alpaca has said he will continue working with animals until he himself is “stuffed”.

Simon Wilson, 62, who is known as “The Stuffa” and lives in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, said his interest in taxidermy first developed when he was just nine years old, as he loved visiting zoos and the Natural History Museum.

He said he was taught by the son of his father’s foreman, who was a taxidermist, and he began practising by stuffing dead pigeons in his mother’s garden shed.

Decades later, he has launched his own business called Animatronic Animals, collaborated with the late Alexander McQueen, and worked as an animal handler and on films including the Harry Potter franchise, Tomb Raider, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Sir Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood.

He said he has worked on animals ranging from a hummingbird the size of a “bumblebee” to a giraffe, lion and bison, and his most unusual projects include a roller-skating alpaca, a bear sat in a telephone box on the toilet and a crocodile holding a tea tray – but this is all “normal” for Simon.

He has many exciting projects coming up, which he cannot disclose, but most recently, he said his creations have appeared in The Gentlemen TV series, Gladiator II, Bridgerton, Ghostbusters and Mission: Impossible.

“I’ve been lucky to do my hobby as a living all my life, travel the world, get paid for it, learn a lot about animals you’d never learn about and have all this (my workshop),” Simon told PA Real Life.

“I’ve done the smallest bird in the world to the largest bird in the world – a hummingbird which is tiny, a bumblebee, and there’s an ostrich over there.

“Every day is different, it’s never felt like I’ve worked.”

Simon’s curiosity for taxidermy was sparked by visiting museums, watching birds in his garden and seeing his father, an artist, draw various feathered creatures while he was growing up.

However, it was not until he saw the collection of his father’s art teacher, a collection which he said included a mammoth’s tooth and a large polar bear rug, that his taxidermy journey truly began.

“I just thought, ‘Wow, this is brilliant, I didn’t know you could have it in your house’, and that’s what made me really want to do it,” he said.

After being taught how to “stuff (his) first bird” by the son of his father’s foreman, aged nine, he then progressed to small mammals – and his first big taxidermy project was a deer.

The Leighton Buzzard resident used to joke and say: “I’d love to be a taxidermist”, but he never thought his childhood dream would become a reality.

Simon then worked as an animal handler for many years, training “cats, dogs, snakes, big cats and deer”, and he set up his business, Animatronic Animals, in 1987.

His interest in animatronics – the technique of making and operating lifelike robots – stemmed from his experience with animals and the film industry.

He has worked on films such as Tomb Raider, where he said “you might be working with Angelina Jolie, throwing chickens between her legs as she gets off a motorbike”, and the Harry Potter series.

Simon said he helped the film crew with Hedwig’s characterisation and has made his own animatronics using a stuffed cow, reindeer and lion, and “a stuffed fox and a bit of fishing line”.

He said he has also worked with live and stuffed ducks to create the famous pond scene in About A Boy, starring Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult.

“For Hedwig (the owl in Harry Potter), they had animatronic versions of each animal, so I would get them a stuffed snowy owl, and their animatronics people would use the feathers to make models,” he said.

Simon said his most famous creation is the Floating Giraffe at Aynhoe Park in Oxfordshire, which was sold at auction for approximately £100,000, and he helped create a Birds of Paradise dress with Alexander McQueen, worn by singer FKA Twigs, along with other fashion pieces.

He keeps his collection of stuffed animals, which includes lions, polar bears, giraffes and an ostrich, in his own workshop, and one child who visited asked: “Is this animal heaven?”

Simon said he will take on projects others say are impossible, and he has many quirky stories from his time as a taxidermist, including one involving a large, male lion.

“We put him in the car, I thought nothing of it, and I was driving back to the workshop,” Simon explained.

“I went round a roundabout, and as I went round, the lion roared which caused a lot of concern, so I stopped the car rapidly, got out, looked through the window.

“I realised what had happened was, it had moved and the air had come out of its lungs and it roared right behind my seat.”

Simon said he sources animals which have died from natural causes from zoos and farms and, depending on the size, his taxidermy creations can take up to several weeks.

The process for stuffing and mounting a giraffe, for example, one of which he recently sold for £4,000, involves turning the skin into leather, which is a complex process, making a sculpture and placing the skin around it, gluing it down, letting it dry and then completing the finishing touches.

Simon’s main income is generated from working in the film industry, with museums, and by renting pieces out – for which he can charge several hundred pounds per week.

Simon said it has been a “mad” journey, and he never imagined having his own successful business and workshop, especially as he started out “in the shed in (his) mum’s garden”.

Listing some of his recent works, he said his stuffed storks appeared in Mission: Impossible; peacocks and other birds in Bridgerton; pigs and deer in House of the Dragon; a lion, giraffes and a polar bear in The Gentlemen series; and geese in Gladiator II.

He said he is going to continue working on taxidermy projects for the foreseeable future, adding: “It’s nice to bring something back to life, it’s not wasted.

“I’ll just keep doing this till I’m stuffed.”

To find out more about Simon and his work, search @simon_the_stuffa on Instagram or visit his website here: animatronicanimals.com.