The other day while Mr. D and Jax were outside, Mr. D called me over. Jax had captured a mouse. Mr. D held the mouse in his hand. "Well, give it back to him," I said. "Let him eat it! He caught it!" Jax sat staring up at that mouse. "No!" Mr. D objected. "That wouldn't be right." "Why not? Violet ate them all the time." "But she was a cat." "So? Jax is 10 times her size and a carnivore too." "He's not eating it." Mr. D poked a gloved finger gently at the mouse. "What are you going to do then? Set it free in our garage so the mouse can stay nice and warm and safe?" (Imagine the sarcasm in my voice at this point, reader.) While we bickered over this point for a few more minutes, Jax kept staring up at the mouse. Eventually, the mouse died in Mr. D's hand and got thrown in the garbage dumpster. Jax headed off to find some of his poop to eat. I'm guessing that was not the way to train him to catch and kill mice for us.
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The mummies were fascinating. Mr. B got grossed out by the holes in the torsos from where the stomach and intestines got extracted. Mr. G seemed a little freaked out, kept asking "are these real mummies?" My favorites were the mummies discovered in a crypt beneath a church in Europe. Someone discovered that a wall concealed a crypt and when they tore the wall down, they found 250 naturally mummified bodies. I assume that the crypt was walled off due to the fact that most of those people died from TB. Natural mummies are more interesting to me than the man-made mummies.
Freakiest? The mummies from South America--unlike the Egyptians, they "pose" the dead people before preserving them. It's one thing to see a dead body laid out flat. It's another entirely to see them sitting up cross-legged.
The exhibit had only one sarcophagus. Egyptian mummies are of particular interest to all of us, but mostly me. When I was in Egypt, I got to see the Cairo Museum's extensive collection of mummies and the glorious display of King Tut and the artifacts in his tomb. The boys had hoped to see more of that kind of mummy, but it was only a small part of the entire exhibit. Even so, they were impressed to view mummies and artifacts dating as far back as 2000 B.C.
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After wrapping up our tour through the mummies, we enjoyed the rest of our museum day. I was surprised at the boys' enthusiasm--I didn't think they'd want to see every square inch of the whole place, but they did. They endured far longer than I expected. Many of the original exhibits are still there and look much smaller than they did when I last visited (during a middle school field trip). The butterfly garden was really wonderful--the boys stood perfectly still waiting for butterflies to land on their heads and hands. Sadly, my sons don't enjoy bathing and the butterflies seemed drawn to little girls who smelled of flowers and had brightly colored barrettes and hair-thingys on their heads. But a few touched down and gave them a thrill.
Mr. G loved looking at the guns, they showed a lot of interest in the Native American exhibit and the dinosaur bones. Mr. T got pretty excited over the rocks and Mr. B liked learning about how scientists do field work. I definitely underestimated their ability to appreciate a museum.
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