{ELEMENTISTS OF WILLOW FOREST BOOK IV} The Day of Death

Day + Night At The Museum

18:  Day + Night At The Museum

 

 

 

Halfway into Year Six, we had this school trip to the Natural History Museum in London.

I don't know if you've been there or not.  It's in London, obviously.  It's free admission.  And you have to queue for ages to get in.  Unless you have a fast pass.  Which you can get for free, on the internet.

Trust me, the whole year were so bummed when we realised our teachers hadn't got us fast passes.

When we finally got in, we (when I say we, I mean the rest of the year group, but mostly just me, Rachael, Josie and Luke) were greeted with the main hallway, and that diplodocus skeleton cast.  It's a pretty amazing building.  All these stone carved walls, and elaborate ceilings.  And the museum itself is huge.  The year had to split off into different groups, each lead by a different teacher.  I was in the same group as Rachael, thank goodness, and we were doing the Blue Zone first.  The Blue Zone is the one on animals (including humans), by the way.

I'm not sure whether I liked it or not.  You'd expect me to love it.  It's a whole museum displaying nature, right?  The Blue Section, though, was full of skeletons, and models, and stuffed animals.  Every time I, for example, went past a stuffed polar bear, I couldn't help thinking of this polar bear called Hallbjörn that I'd helped raise back at Willow Forest.  This stuffed Polar Bear in the glass case looked so sad.  Its fur wasn't nearly as white and fluffy as Hallbjörn's.  I know the bear was supposed to look fierce, but it didn't.  To look fierce, it should have a shiny, thick white pelt blowing gently in the wind, bright, intelligent eyes fixated on you, lips opening into a snarl revealing pearly white teeth, twitching ears, wet nose...

This polar bear had flat, matted fur, dull, clouded brown eyes, fixed lips and ears never to move from the position they were set to be in.  Would Hallbjörn look like that one day?  Would he to become a lifeless doll, stood up in a glass case for people to stare at? 

When Rachael said, "Hey Liv, look!  There's a lion."  I couldn't even look.  Seeing a Hallbjörn was bad enough.  There was no way I could see a stuffed Leo or Sandy without bursting into tears.

Later in the day, when our group was touring the Green Zone, we walked down this gallery on birds.  It was hideous; two walls of dead, stuffed animals of which we were sandwiched between.  The worst bit was this case in the middle, full of things like animal heads.  Not the body, just the head, with a label saying 'Owl Head to Demonstrate Size of Owls' Eyes' (or something along those lines).  It was horrible.  Just, just horrible.  That somebody had seen an owl up a tree, and said to his friend, 'Hey, there's an owl there!  Let's kill it, hack off its head, stuff it and put it in a Museum so people can see what big eyes owls have!'

I hated that part.  All of it.