In recent years attendance to various forms of nonhuman animals in terms of their vitality and agency has led to the emergence of a vital materialist perspective, which is concerned with the 'lively potentials of nonhuman forms and processes' (Lorimer forthcoming). In this biopolitical tradjectory, living matter has become the subject, rather than the object of inquiry. Yet as Braidotti states 'the politics of life itself' places 'emphasis on the shifting boundaries of life and death' (my emphasis 2010:201). It is to this shifting boundary that I attend through an examination of 'doing' taxidermy.  Using empirical data drawn from interviews with taxidermists and film transcripts of both myself and participants 'learning to do taxidermy', I want to draw out the interconnectedness between dead animal body, and the body of the human taxidermist through a focus on the sense of touch.  Using Jane Bennets 'Vital materialism' and Luce Irigarays concept of 'permeability', I draw out the 'liveliness' of dead skin and flesh to highlighting the vulnerability of both dead and living bodies as they encounter each other in taxidermy; a vulnerability that places emphasis on bodies as open to one another.  Following Irigraray and Deleuze and Guattari, this places bodies within an open social field, through which radical democratization of experience is possible (Ruddick, 2010).