The Chosen Animal

Last week, Dan and I celebrated our thirty-second wedding anniversary by going to Harvard’s Natural History museum in Cambridge. It was a lovely warm, golden fall day and Dan actually found a metered parking spot which allowed us to park for two hours. Finding a metered parking spot in the Boston area, let alone Cambridge, is like a miracle: a good start to the day! 

We walked the few blocks to the Natural History museum. Beginning on the third floor with an exhibition of dinosaur skeletons, we made our way through vertebrate paleontology, Cenozoic mammals and finally, the arthropod exhibition. Creatures with many more legs on them than mammals or reptiles were displayed; some in jars, others pinned to cases both horizontal and vertical. An entire wall shimmered with beetles as luminous as rainbows. There was a moth the size of our dog. “Wow, think of the hole this mama could make in my sweater!” I told Dan. A few visitors chuckled. We left the creepy-crawlies and toured the Asian, Central & South American and African animal exhibits, through a room replicating a slice of a New England forest with its inhabitants. I noted the tips of the grey fox’s ears had eroded a bit. The weasels, wolves and beavers stoically guarded their areas; the very opposite of the active animals they had been in real life.

Skeletons of animals that had existed before humans seemed like they were created by Maurice Sendak. Big, hippo-like creatures with oddly shaped heads, tiny ancestors of horses only a foot tall with eight delicate toes, animals with claws, horns, proboscises and, extremely impressive fangs occupied glass cases, while above us, hanging from the ceiling were huge skeletons of creatures that lived in the water. We made our way downstairs to the mammals.

The Great Mammal Hall looked like Grand Central Station at rush hour, except frozen in time. Enclosed in glass cases along with mammals from their own continents were gazelles and every other imaginable deer-like species of all sizes, equines, marsupials, bears, camels, and one giraffe whose neck was so long it nearly reached the second floor. Along the perimeter of the room were Birds of the World, ranging from a hummingbird less than an inch in length to the twelve foot skeleton of New Zealand’s extinct Giant Moa. Several little boys rushed up and down the narrow isles pulling their parents and gasping in theatrical whispers, “WOAH!” at every new case containing surprising-looking creatures.

I was somewhat uncomfortable with the baleen whale skeleton suspended overhead. I worried it would come crashing down, shattering the glass cases, sending glass, bones, dusty fur, feathers and horns, causing a virtual stampede of all these dead creatures through my dreams. One aisle away from me, Dan exclaimed, “This is the scariest animal of all.” He faced a case holding the great apes: chimps, bonobos, guerrillas, and orangutans. Next to the crouching skeleton of a guerrilla stood the skeleton of a Homo Sapien. It posessed no horns, fangs, hooves, nails or other obvious natural weapons. I looked from the guerrilla to the human. Homo Sapien was so obviously defenseless compared to the other creatures. Had Harvard actually stuffed someone, male or female, and put them in the case, the naked body would have looked even more helpless than its skeleton, with only two legs for running, ending in soft bare feet. That delicate skin, whether dark or light was a defenseless layer which bled at the slightest scratch, burnt in the sun; froze in the snow.

“And yet, look what hell we hath wrought upon our fellow creatures and the planet,” I mused. Following Dan into the Earth Science room, I was stunned by rows and rows of cases, each containing rocks and minerals; chunks of pure color. I am like a crow: I love shiny things! I made my way very slowly past case after case of extraordinarily shaped sparkling rocks. I took a class in Geology in college. Although I was confounded by the labs and couldn’t do the math, I loved the lectures, and gathering trilobites (which I promptly made into earrings) from the fossiliferous hills around the campus. 

Suddenly I gasped. “Dan! Have you been watching the time?” Visions of tickets danced in my head. We were easily twenty minutes over our two-hour limit.

“Aah, who cares,” Dan said. “It’s our anniversary. We’ll just pay the ticket.” 

“UN-unh,” I said, “This is the first time I’ve come to Cambridge and gotten relatively cheap parking. If we hurry, maybe there are too many cars here for the ticket person to get to.” A fellow visitor asked how long we’d been married. When Dan replied, he added, “Well then  you’d better listen to your wife. Right?” he added, smiling.

We reached the car; no ticket! “It’s just as well that we are leaving now,” Dan said. I don’t want to get caught in rush hour traffic. He pulled the car out of our spot and we joined the cars leaving Cambridge. “What was your favorite animal?” Dan asked.

My mind flashed past exotic creatures large and small. But they all were long dead and therefore looked nothing like they had when living. All those glass eyes would haunt me for a long time. Mercifully, we made it back to our town before the traffic ground to a standstill.

Liberty was staying overnight for the first time at a new doggie day care near our house. Dan and I would have the whole next day to ourselves before picking her up at dinnertime. She would have fun with the new people and dogs. I knew the staff would ooh and aah about our dog, as did everyone who met her. Liberty is a Blue Merle Border Collie, with one blue and one brown eye. She is silver, black and white, extremely smart and loving. she was born on Valentine’s Day and has a black heart-shaped mark on her hip. She had such spirit and personality!

My mind returned to all those animals in the glass cages. Each of them had a personality as well as things it wanted to do. Warm blood had once coursed through those dusty, preserved bodies. Each loved its life. Some had young and cared for them. I wondered whose skeleton I had seen next to the gorilla. What kind of hopes and fears did that person have? How did all those once-living creatures end up in those cases? 

I remembered Dan’s question again, (who was your favorite animal)? as Liberty came racing out of her day care area, wiggling and squealing into my arms. “This animal, this dog whom I’m lucky enough to live with; this is my favorite animal,” I said out loud to no one in particular.