All photos courtesy tcp909 on flickr
My relationship with nature is, shall we say, complex. I love conservatories, biospheres, insectariums – essentially anywhere I can observe its multifaceted wonders from a plexiglass-mediated distance, safe in the knowledge I will not be stung, injected with venom, or impaled on a tusk. Even trees kind of make me uneasy (those knife-sharp branches could snap off AT ANY MINUTE!). And the less said about bears, the better.
So I was naturally (hah!) quite excited to hear that the Canadian Museum of Nature – better known as that giant castle downtown that makes the streets go all funny – was reopening Saturday, having been closed since approximately the Mackenzie King administration. Even better, admission was free! Given that my love of nature is only surpassed by my love of free stuff, it was essential that I not only go check it out, but report back with a minute-by-minute recap of the excitement.
8:48 p.m. My girlfriend and I, accompanied by our friend D., arrive at the museum, where we are greeted by what I assume is the entire population of Ontario, plus western Quebec. A line stretches out the door to Kanata.
8:49 – The line, thankfully, is for those wanting to take ghost tours of the supposedly-haunted museum, not the general entrance. Witchcraft and hurly-burly 1, science 0.
8:50 – We elbow our way through the insanely crowded foyer, past the wine bar and into the dinosaur gallery – sponsored, D. notes, by Talisman Energy, an oil and gas exploration company. “I like that they’re not shy about saying why we have fossils,” she snarks.
8:52 – Wow, there are a lot of dinosaurs here, many of which originally roamed the wide expanses of Alberta. But enough about the Conservative caucus! Hey-o!
8:58 – There’s a herd of triceratops (at least I think they’re triceratops, based on the encyclopedias I read when I was eight) hangin’ out under the foliage, looking kind of stoned. They’ve been rendered with bright orange skin, a fact I assume is based in hardcore dinosaurology. Meanwhile, I sort of want to adopt a speedy little dude (see below) who probably has some boring sciencey name but shall henceforth be known as Tinysaurus Rex.
8:59 – Seriously, dinosaurs: rad, or raddest? Discuss in the comments.
9:06 – To be fair, dinosaurs aren’t the only prehistoric creatures on display. An ancient cat named Hoplophoneus is preserved mid-leap, pouncing no doubt on an ancient jingly mouse toy. There’s also an exhibit on the Puijila, a seal-type animal discovered in Canada’s arctic that had legs instead of flippers.
9:12 – We take part in an interactive educational game that teaches us about the monotremes, the odd class of animals which includes the mighty platypus. Among the many oddities of the monotreme’s nipple-free existence is that they secrete milk to their young through their skin. This game is led by a digitized moose in a black professor’s cape, a fact which is only slightly less bizarre.
9:21 – Sure, dinosaurs are great and whatnot, but how about some animals that WEREN’T wussy enough to be wiped out by a few little space rocks? It’s time to move on to the mammal exhibit.
9:22 – D’awww, it’s a polar bear cub. I have now said “d’awww” at least five times and am wondering whether part of the museum’s curatorial responsibilities were handled by the folks at Cute Overload.
Photo courtesy tcp909 on flickr.
9:30 – The Museum of Nature’s layout is pretty standard: enter big room shaped like a Tetris block, gaze into nature’s magestic visage, leave through the same door you came in. But because (a) the entire province decided to show up tonight, and (b) I have the attention span of a two-year-old, it’s really not surprising that I have just gotten separated from my comrades.
9:32 – I will assume my comrades were not gored to death by the life-sized musk oxen herd on my immediate left.
9:33 – One of the benefits about going to a museum on opening night is that whatever computer virus that seems to disable 80 per cent of all interactive museum installations worldwide has yet to strike. I ponder this as I engage with a program on a giant LCD screen that compares a squirrel to an all-terrain vehicle.
9:37 – I am happily reunited with my fellow museum-goers at the regal-yet-delicious bison.
9:46 – Ah, the water gallery, with its important ecological messages of conservation and preservation and OH MY DEAR LORD IS THAT A BLUE WHALE SKELETON APPROXIMATELY THE SIZE OF MY APARTMENT HANGING FROM THE CEILING YES IT IS EEEEEEEEEEEEEE
9:47 – I have driven my car across bridges narrower than that thing. Nature, thou art pretty darn awesome.
9:52 – Surrounding the blue whale (which was discovered off the shores of Newfoundland in the 1970s) is a ring of glass shelving containing all manner of bizarrely-named aquatic creatures. These include, but are not limited to: the northern squat lobster, the sea potato, and my personal favourite, the graceful decorator crab – which no doubt invites its fellow crustaceans over for tasteful dinner parties where they sip Gewürztraminer out of seashell-shaped wine glasses and debate the finer points of sustainable fish farming.
9:53 – My girlfriend interrupts my reverie on the oddities of marine life naming protocol with a probing question: “Do you know about barnacle penises?”
10:00 – An hour and a half in, we come across our first live animals: dozens of fish swimming in a massive, ceiling-height aquarium. One actually stops and poses for my camera. Clearly, he/she/it knows it’s a big night.
10:02 – We speed through a board game that takes us through the life of a raindrop, happily arriving at the ocean without being lapped up by a deer and – seriously, you could land on this square – ending up in its bladder.
10:09 – Leaving the water gallery behind, we make our way to the earth gallery. All these elements make me feel a bit like I’m in an 8-bit roleplaying game. Or on the cover of a 70’s prog-rock album.
1o:12 – Let’s face it: rocks, while no doubt impressive in their own rocky way, are a bit of a disappointment after being confronted with the skeleton of Gargantua, Monster Blue Whale from the Briny Deep. However, I did not know what asbestos looked like ten minutes ago, so that’s something.
Photo courtesy tcp909 on flickr.
10:14 – Gazing at case after case of odd-looking minerals, my girlfriend laments that she really hasn’t learned anything about why they matter. “You know who would like this? Ken Jennings,” she says disparagingly.
10:15 – In some of the interactive displays, black rocks with glowing red eyes urge you to remember that they, too, are an integral part of nature’s plan. Surprisingly, this is not as creepy as it sounds.
10:19 – We take a quick jaunt into an exhibit on award-winning nature photography. At least we expect it to be quick, but then, we find that the photo exhibit is merely a front for…
10:20 – …the frog exhibit! Everyone loves frogs! Even their predators feel pangs of guilt for eating them. Why the frogs are hidden behind giant photos of googly-eyed insects, I have no clue.
10:27 – Apparently, frogs share a similar ecological niche with the common photographer (latin name digitalis single-lens-reflexus). The ratio of wide-eyed children to guys with Canons and Nikons (myself included) is approximately 1:1.
10:42 – Two hours in, and we’ve finally made it to the top floor, where the wild bird exhibit is located.
10:44 – I will admit that, prior to tonight’s museum-going, my curiosity about our avian cousins had primarily been limited to issues of stir-frying vs. barbecuing. But that was before I stepped on a scale and learned I weigh between 17,000 and 18,000 hummingbirds (or, if you’re still using the imperial system, six wild turkeys).
10:47 – As I observe specimens of the short-billed dowitcher and the lazuli bunting, it occurs to me that ornithologists can hold their own with marine biologists when it comes to bestowing wacky names on animals.
10:48 – My double entendre-loving girlfriend, whose birdwatching parents clearly raised her with a proper respect for the natural world: “Do they have any dickcissels?”
11:00 – We make our way back down to the main floor, descending through the massive glass tower that is clearly the architectural centrepiece of the museum’s $140-million renewal. “Futuristic” is probably the best word to describe the experience, especially at night – the criss-crossing horizontal and vertical lines kind of make you feel like you’re in the holodeck from Star Trek: TNG. (Come to think of it, the aforementioned bison kind of looks like Will Riker.)
11:01 – Hopefully migrating birds don’t crash into the glass tower. That would be grimly ironic.
11:06 – Unfortunately, we’re six minutes late for the penultimate showing of Green Porno, a series of comical short films about the sex lives of animals. It’s been a long day, so we decide not to stick around – but I do pop my head in to the theatre, where I catch a glimpse of Isabella Rossellini in a bee costume humping a cardboard cutout of a female bee. And that, my friends, is what science is all about.
