The Field Museum

I had never been to the field museum until last Wednesday. Everybody talks about it and and about what a gem it is and when I first moved to Chicago it was mentioned in this book I read about a professor man who is failing at life. Anyway, it turned out that Trish works there and she offered to give a special tour to me and Sophie and Amanda in addition to getting us in for FREE! Which as a total winning point.

I will say that it was an incredibly educational and slightly surreal experience. And one of the best photo-taking events I've had in a very, very long time. We walked up a bunch of stairs to get to a bird area, where we walked in the door and there were just tables of people sitting around and talking as they plucked feathers out of birds and piled the red, meaty carcasses in these bowls. They were specimens. We then visited the room where these specimens have their flesh eaten off by bugs. It smelled a little terrible like rotting things and looked just amazing! The non-waste of it and the thoroughness of the bugs was impressive.



Trish also showed us a great number of skeletons, dried out animal bodies and pickled animals that are being saved. It's both fascinating and horrifying to think that scientists feel the need to have extraneous bodies lying around just in case. Which is pretty much how science works and how we've discovered a lot of important things, but it's so creepy how practical it all seems. There are dead things lying around all messed up and weird looking and it's all just very normal. Which made the whole experience super cool.