Beneski Natural History Museum – Amherst Massachussetts

You know with the economy crashing as badly as it has been I have a feeling more of y’all will be joining me in finding the best FREE entertainment New England has to offer! On this particular day it was the Beneski Natural History Museum attached to the university in Amherst Massachusetts.

This is one of the things I love about New England is their colleges and universities are usually quite proud to share their discoveries and collections with people, even people who do not attend said institutions, which is great because even though I was once academically inclined I now do not have a cent to give towards such lofty endeavors but that doesn’t mean my love for the sciences has waned.

The Natural History Museum is attached to an active science building. There are classes going on in the back but there’s pretty rocks in the hallway just outside said classrooms to enjoy if you’re quiet. I was hoping to eavesdrop on a paleontology lecture as I was surrounded by the aforementioned pretty rocks but instead my eyes glassed over at the sound of someone trying to make unsolvable math problems exciting in two different classrooms. Math. It’s never liked me and I never liked it. But the rocks were cool… there was even a display on rocks and minerals found here in New England and I had NO IDEA were here but now I’ll be looking! And the variety… my god, I’d never heard of most of these little earth treasures.

However I didnt swing by today to tell you about hallways, the main part of the museum was probaly more notable! It had more fossils than anything. Most of the big displays were brought back during one exhibition the college hosted in the 1920’s when all you needed was a $100 car, a pick ax, and a vague destination out west somewhere. The colorful details if this story were everywhere to be read and enjoyed.

But there were also drawers, so many drawers! Each just asking to be opened with all sorts of fun stuff… everything from trilobites to turtle fossils. My favorite displays included an Irish elk, two beautiful archapteryx complete with fossilized feathers, and a sea scorpion which is the state fossil of New York. Also the basement which had dinosaur tracks and dinosaur skin imprints lining all the walls.

And since I seem to be writing this entry backwards I will say the exhibits in the entry were very well displayed and even included a cute little dinosaur I’d never heard of and the school’s mascot: the mighty mastodon. A very excitable student greeted us and told us to ask any questions we had. I didn’t ask anything but I did learn the US used to have tiny camels running around and there’s a rock called wulfinite that’s is a gorgeous orange…

I guess that’s where I’ll leave you until tomorrow when I’ll tell you where we walked from here.

April 24, 2025 0

Peabody Natural History Museum – New Haven Connecticut

There’s few things more alluring than the chance to see dinosaurs. Add to that the fact this museum was free and we were all on board. To the dinosaurs!!

Of course being a natural history museum there was a lot more than dinosaurs but they were the first thing we saw – specifically a life size triceratops guarding the outside of the building and several pterodactyl fossils just in the lobby. Already I was endeared. From here we wandered into a large room with mostly prehistoric ice age fossils – all the most beloved creatures from the time – a mammoth, a sabre tooth tiger, even a moa which I lovingly call a “12 foot murder bird.” It was a nice display.

This wasn’t the end of the fossils. There was also marine fossils, including a precambrian section with an anomolocarus, a whole dinosaur room, and even a huge sea turtle in a large sitting area near the bathrooms. Also near the bathrooms was a super cool little water bottle refilling station claiming to have saved the world from thousands of plastic bottles. I liked that!

The museum also had a selection of very well done taxidermy of unusual species – my favorite was an aye aye, as well as displays about how taxidermy is done, as well as a living lab with leaf cutter ants and butterflies. For the more technical minds there were displays of the evolution of various technologies, for history buffs there was a very touching display of archeological finds including a Mesopotamian legal document showing a woman selling her own children into slavery to spare them from starvation after losing her husband, and finally there were several rooms dedicated to rocks and minerals that were far more fascinating than I had anticipated. Things I’d never seen – including one that looked like rolls of fabric and another spikey creation that made me itchy looking at it.

All and all we spent a couple hours in this museum and for being free I was quite impressed! I would definitely recommend it to any curious minds looking for something to do in the area.

June 10, 2024 0

Springfield Science Museum – Springfield Massachusetts

Since we were already at the Dr Suess Museum, we decided it was worth using our ticket to see the Science Museum on premise as well. It was definitely geared for children. And children at heart. I wanted to see the dinosaurs because… dinosaurs. They had a life-size T-rex sculpture, a stegosaurus, and a few modest displays around them. It was… underwhelming but luckily other things in the museum sufficed to keep me entertained!

Most of them were in the basement where no one else seemed to be… But here in this VERY warm abode there were a bunch of cute critters! Native fish, some small reptiles, some non-native marine fish, and more turtles than I could have hoped for (one who was INTENSELY staring at me, not sure why.) My companion found entertainment in front of the snake enclosure because someone had just lobbed two very dead mice in there and the snake was contentedly nomming down on them.

Upstairs there was a TON of taxidermy – both African game and normal New England based critters. Most of the African creatures were superbly done – except for those vaguely wonky lions and the chimpanzee with a… human? ish…. face…. I don’t know what demons were inhabiting that poor chimp but something! Meanwhile the local critters were a real tossup between ‘great job’ and ‘WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE?!’ The winner of the latter category went to muskrat with a wildly contorted face.

There also was a modest Native American exhibit as well as an African peoples exhibit and some replicas of various human ancestor skulls which I found interesting. They also had a planetarium which we did not go to see a show at but we did loiter around their space exhibits for a bit. Pet a meteor, played with a robotic arm, looked curiously at a space suit, and weighed myself on the “How Fat are you on Other Planets?” scale. That one told me I lost a pound so I liked it.

ANYWAY… This was a lovely destination if you have kids, especially under 10 or so. Or if you are a big kid like me! It was a nice bonus to the Dr Suess Museum!

November 13, 2023 0

The Edna Nature Lab – Providence RI

If libraries full of books weren’t enough for us we decided that a library of dead things might round out the day. That’s basically what the Edna Nature Lab is. It’s a large collection of bones and specimens that are there for easy study by the students at the Rhode Island School of Design. And if you follow this blog you might remember not too long ago I was at the RISD poking at their puppet museum. Clearly this is a school for… strange people. And that’s what so amazing about it!

Now when we arrived the door was locked. This was clearly some sort of college building used for different things so we were kind of out of luck until a gaggle of students walked in and we… just followed them. Sorry security! We promise not to do anything bad!

The lab was great. It was a giant room full of bones, taxidermy, insect specimens, you name it. There was even a few cages and tanks with live baby sea horses and a veeeery old and depressed looking degu. Maybe it survived the rest of the colony, I don’t know. My companion had never seen one before and thought he was cute. I… once had one of them escape my breeding colony that I had a teenager and unbeknownst to me it ended up living feral in my lawn until my pit bull was found throwing its carcass violently into the air like a toy. It was a bit of a startling sight to see a Chilean rodent being dug up by your dog in your very American lawn… Such is my life.

But back to the lab! It reminded me of something a Victorian “naturist” would have set up. I was very keen on the bones and bug specimens but there was also a lot of really spectacular taxidermy… and one baby dik dik that looked fucked up. I guess you need one piece of bad taxidermy to make the rest look all the better, I don’t know. Anyway, it was a short visit but none the less super interesting and we left before being removed by security. So that’s always good.

As we left I also noticed they seemed to have a bunch of marine tanks in the basement I could see through a window. Some with little cuttlefish in them and that just made my heart soar a bit. So cute. Remember when we all though marine biologist was like the go to job in the adult world? Those were the days…

Onward we walked to the nearby gun totem!

July 24, 2022 0