A Night at the Museum

Or, "It Pays to Know People."

My mom is finishing up her visit here, is headed back to Kansas tomorrow (where, please take note Cleveland peeps, it's been at or near 110 degrees most days for several weeks now--at those temps, the fact that it's a dry heat isn't really all that relevant, and in fact they'd love some humidity since they're experiencing severe drought). So for a nice outing today, we went to the Natural History Museum, where we're actually members. It's a totally fun place, though this year is actually the first time we've coughed up for a membership. It was definitely worth the money, though--once we figured in the kids' day camp discounts, we concluded that we only had to go once for the membership to pay for itself. We've actually been a few times.

First we sat in on the live animal exhibit. A very sweet and earnest intern named Kelly did the program. She is in serious need of a public speaking class and/or more practice, but she is clearly committed to her area of study and despite the excess of "Um"s, she did have a lot of interesting useful information. My biggest takeaway: the Great Horned Owl is one absolute badass. Total and complete, Bengal-Tiger-Top-Of-The-Food-Chain badass. Much respect to the Great Horned Owl. Did you know this thing sometimes kills and eats hawks? Seriously. Much respect.

So then we sat in on the planetarium show. As you might expect, this sort of thing is right in my husband's wheelhouse. He knows most of the people working at the planetarium, including the guy who was running the show that day. So not only did the guy who ran the afternoon show recognize and point out my husband, but afterwards we chatted with him and he took us on a little backstage tour. It was really incredible. We went into the cold storage area, where they have a lot of their taxidermy and bone-fossil pieces, as well as some samples of contraband endangered animal products that federal agents have seized from would-be smugglers. It was really incredible. Our intrepid guide informed us that only about 4 or 5 museums in the entire country have larger repositories of animal DNA than does the Cleveland MNH, and they include behemoths like the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and the Field Museum in Chicago.

It was really fascinating. One of many times when I've been reminded how very, very cool it is to have hooked up with a real live scientist.