pharaohs.
“Sure do. I got an email from that English archaeologist recently, asking how you’re doing.”
“Cool,” he said. “Can I pat the dog again?”
Anya had brought Brown-Eye with them and hidden him under a rug. She hadn’t wanted to scare the children, but the rug seemed to pique the curiosity of everyone in the queue. Ben didn’t seem to mind that the dog wasn’t actually alive.
“Where are we going first?” he asked, unable to stand still for more than a couple of seconds. “Can we go to the skeleton room?”
Anya checked her watch. The taxidermist wasn’t due for half an hour and had agreed to meet them in the Search and Discovery Center, an interactive room full of preserved specimens, microscopes and computers.
“We’ve got plenty of time. Skeleton room it is.”
The man behind the ticket counter chuckled at the parcel in her hands. “No dogs allowed,” he said, pretending to be stern. Anya happily explained the purpose of the visit, and he let them through.
“Hope he’s toilet-trained, or you’ll be cleaning up the mess,” he added, and chortled.
Ben slipped his hand into Anya’s spare one as they followed the signs to the skeleton room.
“Wow! Check this out,” he said, and hurried to the center display. A human sat in a rocking chair flanked by a dog, cat and rat, all in skeletal form.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the animal bones.
“That one is the dog, chasing the cat, chasing…”
“That’s a giant mouse! It’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”
Anya laughed and wondered how many mice her son had actually seen. “It’s a rat. They’re bigger than mice.”
Ben’s hand grabbed his mother’s again. “Is that what you look like inside?”
“Sure is,” she said. “Come and see this one.”
She steered him over to a human skeleton riding a bike behind glass. On the visitors’ side was another bike.
“If you hop on, you can see what parts move when we pedal.” She put the dog down and lifted Ben up but his legs didn’t reach the pedals. Instead, he sat on the seat and pretended.
“Your turn,” he said. Anya lifted him off and climbed on. She pedalled as fast as she could and Ben hooted at the skeleton’s movements. “Can I stop now?” she begged after a minute. “I’m puffed.”
They wandered along, looking up at the giraffe. “Wow!”
“Did you know that the heart has to pump incredibly hard to get blood all the way up to its head? If it bends down and gets up too quickly, it can faint.”
“I’ve seen them in books getting down to drink. Their legs go like this.” He stood, legs as far apart as he could in a side split, then toppled over, much to his amusement.
Anya laughed. “Look, over here.” On the other side of the room behind glass was a full dolphin. The bones in the fin for some reason surprised her. She’d never thought about sea mammals in that form before.
“Is it an elephant?” she asked.
“NO!” he guffawed.
“A goldfish?”
“NO!” Giggling, he said, “Mum, it’s way too big for one of those.”
“What is it then?”
“It has a dolphin nose and dolphin fins…”
“I know! It’s a whale!” she announced in a goofy voice.
Ben keeled over with laughter and patted her back. “NO! It’s a dolphin!”
Anya loved the way they played. Being silly with Ben was one of the best things about parenthood. Despite being so caught up in death and trauma in her working life, simple pleasures like this were what mattered most. She wished more people realized that, and bent down to give him a kiss. He returned it with a hug.
Carrying Brown-Eye didn’t detract from their fun. Apart from the odd stare, they could have been sharing the day with the family pet. It didn’t seem out of place in a building full of preserved birds and specimens.
After two laps of the room, Ben declared the “Bone Ranger on its horse” his favorite. At half past ten they found their way to the Search and Discovery Center.
“Wow! I love this place,” Ben declared. “Mum, can I please go play?”
“Sure can.” The man behind the information desk stood up, displaying an official white coat. “That’s what it’s all here for.”
Ben headed for the smaller specimens and the man turned to Anya. “I’m guessing you’re Doctor Crichton. Tim Weston. We spoke on the phone.”
“Thanks so much for coming in today,” she said.
“My pleasure. Let’s have a look at what you’ve got.” He took the dog and rug to a side exhibit with benches of stuffed lizards, reptiles and marsupials. Brown-Eye looked overgrown in comparison.
Anya glanced at the near-empty room and saw Ben kneeling on a stool to reach the eyepiece of a microscope. Tranquil music played over the speakers.
“Mum, they’ve got spiders and flies!” he called, staring down the lens. She had to smile. A room full of animals and a boy is most impressed by things he could see at home.
“It’s been frozen, this one,” Tim announced, referring to Brown-Eye.
“I didn’t think that worked.”
“Not a lot of people understand taxidermy. Those who do it don’t often talk about it, especially the ones who do big-game animals for hunters.”
Coming from a scientific background, she’d only associated taxidermy with places like museums, not trophy rooms in homes around the world.
“What sort of dog is it? Looks like a cross-breed.” Tim sniffed the coat.
“Does it matter?”
“Yep. Pure breeds are almost impossible to link to a DNA sample. There’s so much inbreeding, the profiles look pretty much the same. Now if it’s a mongrel like this one looks to be, we’ve got a chance.”
“What are you smelling for?”
“There are a couple of ways to preserve the animals. One is by stretching the pelt over a wire frame made with wood and wool or coconut fiber. To prevent insect attacks, you rub either borax or naphthalene on the inside.” He got even closer to the pelt and inhaled.
“Looks like museum beetles have already eaten away some of the skin. By the stench, someone’s sprayed it with insect killer.”
Anya was always enthralled when people spoke passionately about their areas of expertise. She’d once spent two hours listening to a fly-fisherman tell her about the various ways to make flies and was absorbed the whole time. Taxidermy wasn’t a topic she was likely to come across again soon.
“What’s the other way?”
“Looks like this fellow’s been freeze-dried.”
The image of a dog in the family freezer came to mind, albeit briefly. The whole thing seemed grotesque, but then she’d never been so close to a pet as to want it around as a perennial piece of furniture.
“It’s not what you’re probably thinking,” Tim said. “The animal’s posed and then frozen in a unit. It extracts the water, which goes from ice to vapor, hence the term ‘freeze-dried.’ The process takes weeks to months. They do it for lizards, pets, but it’s a bit trickier with fish.”
Ben had moved on to a round table with animal bones and was assembling some kind of skeleton. He looked up with a cheeky grin, waved to his mother and continued building. A little girl about the same age sat on the other side of the table. The pair had already struck up a conversation, as kids are prone to do.
Anya admired the room’s brilliant design. Parents could be in one section and still keep an eye on their children without being on top of them. The long warehouse-style facility had been tastefully designed with a row of overhead spotlights shining from a drop rail, giving the place a studious but relaxed feel. One side of the room was filled with bookshelves, with the space divided by multiple stations and comfy-looking lounges.
It was the sort of place Anya could spend hours in, and, thanks to Ben, often did.
“Did you get the original sample sent to the laboratories?” she asked, keen to go and play with her son.
