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Friday I went to the Harvard Natural History Museum with my sister. It's one of those things I'd meant to do way back when I was still attending college in the Boston area but never got around to.
Also Jazz in July started that day and I really wanted to see Yoko Miwa live. (This I didn't actually get to do, but she'll be performing again this month so I was only a little bummed out.)
SO! I wasn't entirely sure what to expect at the museum, because I only knew about their glass flower exhibit, extensive taxidermy animal collection and super-low admission price. Basically my sister and I were just hoping it wouldn't be a) boring and b) smelly/gross.
Anyway, it turned out alright! (But it was kind of smelly.) The first exhibit on evolution was kind of a drag because it was a bunch of boring video displays and animals in formaldehyde jars. But they did have this horrific creature in a jar, which was kind of awesome:
It actually made a girl next to me start crying in fear, which, because I am an easily amused and terrible person, I found hilarious.
After the evolution area things picked up considerably with a display on how colors are made and used in nature. It was full of butterflies and iridescent beetles and birds with ridiculous plumage, and actual, living poison dart frogs that were not actually poisonous because of their diet. There were other not permanent exhibits that were neat, like the one on animal horns and another one on animals in New England.
At that point my sister and I were all 'kinda neat but not, you know, super neat.' But then we got to the hall of mammals which was TOTALLY AWESOME because it had complete whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling, like this!:
Also giraffes, elephants, giant cats, etc. But mostly OMG HUGE WHALES.
And really, OMG HUGE was the coolest thing about the Natural part of the Natural History museum. After the whale skeletons we wandered over to the dinosaur/ice age skeleton area where we saw this dude:
It's called KRONOSAURUS (awesome) and it is 42 feet long. The head alone is around six feet long, which we discovered when we walked up to it and realized that I could have laid down in its mouth and there would be room left over. :O Alas, one cannot actually lie down in the Kronosaurus head, but it was cool nonetheless.
We left after that, stopping by the semi-famous glass flower exhibit, which is quite pretty and informative and wow in a 'those are really made of glass?!' kind of way, but IDK, maybe we were all scienced out or something, but rows and rows of weeds and flowering plants got boring pretty quickly. We also peeked into the geology room, but after we saw the gigantic rock full of purple crystals we were like "ok that's enough" and went out for lunch & the best hot chocolate ever.
Then we got crushed on the subway by people trying to get to goddamn Harborfest to throw tea in the goddamn harbor and I almost had a panic attack, but luckily I did not. Also there were some actors for the 4th of July weekend re-enactment things going on, and it was kind of hilarious watching people in Revolutionary War-era clothing getting squashed on the subway just like everyone else.
I would post pictures of our ~adventures~ but my sister took all of them because I was too busy being a nerd and pretending the Kronosaurus and giant sloth skeletons were eating me, and she hasn't had the time to upload them yet.
THE END.
thrilling isn't it
Also Jazz in July started that day and I really wanted to see Yoko Miwa live. (This I didn't actually get to do, but she'll be performing again this month so I was only a little bummed out.)
SO! I wasn't entirely sure what to expect at the museum, because I only knew about their glass flower exhibit, extensive taxidermy animal collection and super-low admission price. Basically my sister and I were just hoping it wouldn't be a) boring and b) smelly/gross.
Anyway, it turned out alright! (But it was kind of smelly.) The first exhibit on evolution was kind of a drag because it was a bunch of boring video displays and animals in formaldehyde jars. But they did have this horrific creature in a jar, which was kind of awesome:
It actually made a girl next to me start crying in fear, which, because I am an easily amused and terrible person, I found hilarious.
After the evolution area things picked up considerably with a display on how colors are made and used in nature. It was full of butterflies and iridescent beetles and birds with ridiculous plumage, and actual, living poison dart frogs that were not actually poisonous because of their diet. There were other not permanent exhibits that were neat, like the one on animal horns and another one on animals in New England.
At that point my sister and I were all 'kinda neat but not, you know, super neat.' But then we got to the hall of mammals which was TOTALLY AWESOME because it had complete whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling, like this!:
Also giraffes, elephants, giant cats, etc. But mostly OMG HUGE WHALES.
And really, OMG HUGE was the coolest thing about the Natural part of the Natural History museum. After the whale skeletons we wandered over to the dinosaur/ice age skeleton area where we saw this dude:
It's called KRONOSAURUS (awesome) and it is 42 feet long. The head alone is around six feet long, which we discovered when we walked up to it and realized that I could have laid down in its mouth and there would be room left over. :O Alas, one cannot actually lie down in the Kronosaurus head, but it was cool nonetheless.
We left after that, stopping by the semi-famous glass flower exhibit, which is quite pretty and informative and wow in a 'those are really made of glass?!' kind of way, but IDK, maybe we were all scienced out or something, but rows and rows of weeds and flowering plants got boring pretty quickly. We also peeked into the geology room, but after we saw the gigantic rock full of purple crystals we were like "ok that's enough" and went out for lunch & the best hot chocolate ever.
Then we got crushed on the subway by people trying to get to goddamn Harborfest to throw tea in the goddamn harbor and I almost had a panic attack, but luckily I did not. Also there were some actors for the 4th of July weekend re-enactment things going on, and it was kind of hilarious watching people in Revolutionary War-era clothing getting squashed on the subway just like everyone else.
I would post pictures of our ~adventures~ but my sister took all of them because I was too busy being a nerd and pretending the Kronosaurus and giant sloth skeletons were eating me, and she hasn't had the time to upload them yet.
THE END.
thrilling isn't it
