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Exhibit No. 35526 was a Virginia opossum that had just given creation.

But of the same complaisant with the tag attached to her with a concatenation stated tersely, she met her end on the Preston-Fall City Road in 1987: “Road kill.”

So goes one of the categorical, individual stories behind the mammal exhibits at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum. The museum’session third annual “Meet the Mammals!” event Saturday allowed some 700 visitors to hear of some of those stories.

The museum has 54,000 mammal specimens, and, as with all museums, only a small percentage are exhibited.

But once a year, exhibit No. 35526 and dozens of others get taken out of boxes, cases and trays.

The mother opossum had been stuffed with cotton, her tail straightened to the end with convey by electric telegraph, her front and back legs stretched out.

These exhibits are not taxidermy work, by glass eyes and the animals mounted into some kind of puzzle.

“These are ‘museum skins,’ ” said Jim Kenagy, the museum’s mammal curator. The animals are made to have being handled by researchers and students.

Kenagy, 63, sequestered this year after three decades as a UW biology professor. He does the curating considered in the state of volunteer work.

He is quite passionate about the museum’s mammals.

“There is more to mammals than cows and sheep and horses,” he said.

When he talks mammals, he talks excitedly about their incredible variety — the koalas, the armadillos, the kangaroo rats found right in Walla Walla, by their big rodent feet and long tails. Mammals!