Adventures at the Museum

Way back in my twenties, when I actually believed that I could do anything I set my mind to, before I learned that math and I could never be friends. I was going to school to be a marine biologist. And because of this interest I went to work in the Cephalopod lab at the Museum of Natural History – by the way a totally fabulous experience.

Anyhow, they had a very large room crammed full of octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and nautilus, fermenting in jars and looking out at you with glazed over, eerie eyes, and arms flowing everywhere. Some looking like there really was just too much animal for the jar they were in and they were going to bust the seams at any minute. AWESOME STUFF.

So my brother, being a brother, says "hey there is a cool movie about working in museums called the Relic." (if you have not seen it, it is a late 80s - early 90s flick about a slithering, wheezing, scraping, carnivorous, gruesome, shape-shifting monster who haunts the local natural history museum….he did NOT tell me this BEFORE I saw it!)

So I am standing in the previously mentioned room of fermenting animals – cataloging what was where, and so forth…when off to the side of the room (that only has one door and I have been standing near it) comes a slithering, wheezing, scraping sound. My heart stopped and then was racing so fast I had to force myself to breath and I am thinking …."NO WAY" this is sooo totally not real …and then I make the most classic of all blunders – Yes, I actually went looking for the noise – I did not do the sensible thing (that everyone yells at the screen when they are watching the Relic, like "Go the other way!" or "Don't go looking for it, you idiot!") I crept slowly around each of the shelves, holding my breath and trying to peer through the age colored formalin and tangles of arms to spot the creature, braced with a clipboard and a pencil. (I am sure that I would have made an impressively daunting opponent!)

So what was the ferocious, intern-eating, slithering, and wheezing beast…well, apparently there was a hidden door behind one of the cabinets and a very aging, wheezing, foot sliding, cane using scientist had made his way in to the back of the room. I must admit, to my dismay, that I only spotted him departing by the back door when I gave up my bravery completely and had run from the room and around the outside corridor, out of fear and a vain effort to find a fire extinguisher. It seemed like a good idea at the time – I could either fry it with chemicals or hit it on whatever looked to be its head.

I am relieved to say that I did not attack the aging professor with a fire extinguisher, but it is a good thing he turned the corner before I did! As it was, he just thought I was a lunatic maintenance person brandishing a fire extinguisher and thankfully I never saw him again.