Week 10: Goodbye Again

I have had another wonderful summer. This week I finished the final edits on my online training website and handed it into my boss. It will hopefully be the first online training used by the education and outreach department at the museum. I also attended a seminar for interns about getting paid internships and jobs within the Smithsonian. I am hoping to be able to come back to the museum for a paid internship next summer.

On my last day I said goodbye to the people, the bugs, and the bones. I also had to turn in badge. I hate giving back my badge. Without the badge I can no longer get into the back hallways or use the staff entrance. More importantly I lose my discount in the museum stores. :-)

I have determined that my ideal career would be in the education and outreach department of the museum and I think that I am on my way to getting there. I am extremely grateful for the opportunities and experiences I have had at Smithsonian this summer.

Week 9: When I’m Not on a Tour

I have written a lot about the tours I take, since I often learn some very interesting things about the museum. But I do actually work here, and thought I might talk about that this week. My day at the museum generally consists of helping with any extra lab or animal prep that needs to be done in the morning, working on my independent project, occasionally helping to pin the chrysalides that come in during the week, and helping with whatever miscellaneous project needs help. On Wednesdays, the lab work includes coming in early and helping change out all of the plants in the Butterfly Pavilion.

I may have mentioned this earlier, but the Smithsonian is not licensed to breed any of the butterflies on display. This means that every plant that leaves the pavilion, and any dead butterflies, must be frozen for 72 hours before being thrown away. So all of the plants that are changed out every week are double bagged and brought on metal carts through a maze of three different freight elevators and down several back hallways to a large walk-in freezer that is stored in an old men’s bathroom (clearly no longer functioning, but the baby blue tile and mirrors remain.) This freezer is in the farthest back and most hidden corner of the museum I have ever found (and I have spent a lot of time exploring this building.)

The fact that the museum is not allowed to breed the butterflies also means that they must receive constant shipments of chrysalides from breeders around the world. Butterflies have an average life span of about two weeks; in order to keep the population in the pavilion going, there are usually at least two boxes of new chrysalides that come in each week. They come wrapped in paper towels with a label. We lay them out and pin each chrysalis to a foam board, which is then displayed so that visitors can watch the butterflies emerge (I am not as good at pinning as one of the other interns, so she tends to get this duty.)

I also spend a fair amount of time at the back of the butterfly pavilion. Because there are many exotic species kept in the pavilion it is very important that no butterflies escape into DC. So everyone who works in the butterfly pavilion takes an hour or two of back door duty, which involves letting visitors out into a vestibule with a mirrored wall and helping them check themselves over for any hitchhiking butterflies. There are a few caught every day that get placed into a box in the vestibule for reintroduction to the pavilion at the end of the day. I had quite a few children look over and very excitedly cry, “Look mommy! That butterfly is in time out!” Occasionally, someone from the education department helps by taking a shift at the back door to free up the Butterfly Pavilion staff (and once even the Director of the museum came down for a shift.) One side effect of this job is that those of us who do it regularly find ourselves obsessively scanning people’s backpacks on the Metro platform, checking for butterflies.

Week 8: Petting a Passenger Pigeon

This week I learned a bit about what the ornithologists at the museum do. On the intern tour, we saw specimens that have been collected by the scientists; specimens that were collected and stuffed by Teddy Roosevelt; and the extinct bird box. This is a small box of extinct North American species that they keep out to show visitors and interns (at the end of the tour I was even allowed to pet the passenger pigeon.) The collection of birds (and really, everything in the museum, for that matter) is used regularly by both museum and visiting researchers. The constant continuing collection of these specimens is crucial. As time goes on, populations of animals in different geographical areas change; museum collections allow researchers to clearly see and document those changes.

But that’s not all that ornithologists at the museum do. They also handle quite a few cases from airports. Museum specialists often receive mangled and virtually unidentifiable bird remains from airports across the country for identification. If there are feathers, researchers start there, using the collection as a reference once they have identified the basic group of birds the remains probably came from. If there are no clear feathers left, they may obtain a DNA profile of the bird and then move into the collection. Once researchers have identified the bird, they can help airports develop strategies to deter specific problem species from the runways.

In one case that the tour guide told us about, the Smithsonian had received a sample from the military without being told anything about where the plane was going or where it had come from, so they had no idea where to even start looking. DNA led them to a species found only in a foreign country.

There was also a remarkable case in mid-December, in which the lab tech in charge of running the DNA kept coming back to ask if they had given her the correct DNA. She was new and very eager to do a good job and had run it several times before she finally came back to the museum researchers and told them that the DNA results showed that the remains were from a deer, bringing up several questions-- quite a few reindeer jokes. The pilot was very clear that he had hit a bird and that there were no deer on the runway when he took off. The case was finally resolved when they ran a different section of the remains for DNA and realized that they belonged to a vulture whose last meal had been deer.

Week 7: Spiders and Pandas and Elephants, Oh My!

After three years with the Insect Zoo, this week I finally held a tarantula. Tarantulas aren’t handled very much; it’s not really good for them and there isn’t often a need to hold them, so they are usually left alone. However, this week I was making one of my instructional videos for volunteers, “What to do if a tarantula escapes.”

Before the museum opened one morning, my boss got out one of our tarantulas and demonstrated, for the cameras, what to do if she escaped. He placed her on the carpet and then scooped her into a deli cup. After the demonstration, I was able to pet her and then hold her. Tarantulas really aren’t that scary. She was very docile and soft and perfectly content to just sit still on my hand.

I was also finally able to go on an interns’ tour of MSC, the Museum Support Center. This complex in Maryland is where many of the Natural History Museum’s specimens are stored. There, a series of climate-controlled pods hold everything from fossils to Samurai suits to boats.

On this tour, we saw some of the Anthropology and Mammal Collections. In the Anthropology collection we saw 1,500-year-old Peruvian cloth, an amazing Japanese doll house, parkas made of whale intestines and more. I was even able to hold a one million-year-old hand axe from Kenya, donated to the museum by the Leakeys.

In the Mammal department, I held the rib of a manatee; saw multiple elephant skulls (including that belonging to the elephant in the rotunda); and viewed the pelts of Washington, DC’s two beloved pandas, Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing, who now reside in a drawer at MSC. Apparently many of the National Zoo’s animals eventually end up at the Natural History Museum.

Below: Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing, giraffe skin (note how thick it is), tigers (the one with an open mouth used to be a rug and was then donated), the skull of the elephant in the museum rotunda, the skull of a vampire deer, and a little something from the random reptile shelf in the mammal department.

Week Six: Happy Fourth!

I spent all day on the Fourth of July in the Butterfly Pavilion, and let me just say, what an experience! I rode the escalator up from the Metro to find the streets full of people, every one of whom was covered head to toe in red, white, and blue. By 9 AM the areas around the museum leading to the mall were packed. The national anthem was being sung on the steps of the National Archives.

It was extremely hot, with temperatures hovering in the nineties and up into the hundreds. So, naturally, as soon as the museum opened, all of those people on and around the mall who had arrived at 9 AM to wait for the 9 PM fireworks came in to take advantage of the café and air conditioning. It was a busy, busy day in the Butterfly Pavilion. So many children covered in flags and face paint! Early in the day the children were bouncing around like crazy; I almost lost my voice telling them to stop petting the butterflies. By afternoon, the crowd was more subdued. These were folks who had been outside all morning; some of the excitement had given way to exhaustion. At 6 PM I left the pavilion and changed my clothes.

By 6:30, I was walking into the American History Museum to meet my grandparents. That museum had been closed to the public for the day in order to prepare for the evening’s festivities. Two areas had been set up for the Smithsonian’s three hundred Fourth of July guests. On the second floor, the Apollo Theater and First Ladies’ Gowns exhibits were left open. In the hallway between them was a catered meal of time-honored American summer fare that included hot dogs (in hot dog stands,) popcorn, soft pretzels, and a multitude of desserts. On the roof, (Yep, the roof!) there was more food—from hamburgers, corn-on-the-cob and baked beans to cotton candy. There were games, face painting, and balloon animals for the kids, and battery powered, blinking red, white and blue star necklaces for everyone. The Smithsonian’s guests had an incredible view of the mall, with some of the best seats in town for Washington DC’s spectacular fireworks. It was a very special Fourth.

Week Five: Volunteer Training

Insect Zoo:

Lately I’ve been able to get a really good start on my independent project. I’m creating an online training for volunteers who do tarantula feedings. It involves creating an outline of what should be included in a feeding, basic logistics, instructional videos, surveys, and a general fact sheet with information about tarantulas.

This week I sent out the initial survey to volunteers about how their tarantula feedings work now. Prior to this there has been no official training for doing tarantula feedings, and that was reflected in the survey results. The volunteers are wonderful and give excellent presentations, but there is a wide range, between individual volunteers of material presented and knowledge of tarantula behavior. There are also discrepancies in the length of presentations, which isn’t good. Most volunteers listed their feedings as lasting between 20 and 30 minutes. The museum states that feedings should last no more than 10 minutes.

With this information in hand, I was able to create an outline of what information should be included in a feeding and the logistics of the presentation. I then put this onto a website, with a separate page for tarantula information (which I will be putting together next) and some instructional videos.

Forensic Anthropology Lab:

I have had a few interesting encounters in the Forensic Anthropology Lab this week. In the Insect Zoo people come to see the bugs, usually as a novelty. They come and take their picture with a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach to put up on Facebook, but they don’t always show a great deal of interest in the insects. In the Forensic Lab, in part due to the popularity of the subject on television, visitors are much more engaged in the material. They ask questions and try to solve the case that’s laid out. They still occasionally just want to take pictures with the bones, but not as often.

Visitors also share more harrowing personal stories in the Forensic Lab. In the Insect Zoo I hear people complain about the tomato hornworms in their gardens and ask me how to get rid of them. In the Forensic Lab, one woman told me all about a car accident that fractured her leg and asked what her bones would look like because of that. Another told me about a healed fracture that had never been set properly, again asking what it would look like. Yet another asked about how her cancer would affect her skeleton. One day a man came up to me and confessed the trouble he was having reconciling his faith with the science he was seeing in the museum. He told me about things he’d seen in a creationist museum in Texas. I prepared to deliver the standard “Sir, the Smithsonian is an institution devoted to science and education, not faith. The information presented in this museum is all based on scientific research.” But he did not continue to attack, criticize, or question me about my beliefs or the information presented in the museum, as I have experienced in the past. Instead, he told me that he was trying to keep an open mind. He told me that he supported his son, a biology major, and that he understood that the science made sense, but he was just having such a hard time reconciling this with what he had been taught all of his life. He was clearly very torn and sad about the entire situation. I wasn’t quite sure what to say to him.

The most difficult interaction I have had thus far was with a thirteen-year-old girl. She was looking at a poster on the wall showing different types of burials. She asked me about them, and was curious about what the dead were wearing. We talked for a while and I explained that different cultures have lots of different burial practices and traditions. She then paused for a minute and said, “like in the United States, we’re buried in our favorite outfit. Like my best friend was buried in her prom dress.” It’s difficult to know what to say when things like that come up.

Week Four: Bodies in the Basement

This week I was lucky enough to be able to take a tour of the museum’s Mummy Vault with some other interns. The museum’s mummy collection is not very big compared to some of the other collections, and is housed in the basement. An interesting place-- rumor has it that at one time they were planning to turn the basement into a parking garage. They assigned each curator a space before construction began, but before they had a chance to turn the area into parking, the curators had all fenced off the spaces allotted to them and began filling them with stuff. Museum curators just love stuff. Not one of them ever throws anything away. It didn't come as much of a surprise to anyone working in the museum that the garage never happened. The spaces still sit, sectioned off by chicken wire and full of stuff.

One section of the basement, however, belongs to the mummies. The first things we looked at were a few cast-iron coffins, a couple for adults and one belonging to an infant, with remains yet to be examined. These coffins, when sealed properly, cause natural mummification by keeping air and moisture out. The ones we saw had been found on construction sites in Philadelphia. Apparently old burials regularly turn up at construction sites, and the remains are often sent to the museum. These coffins were all in an area that looked just about the way one would expect the Smithsonian’s basement to look. They lay just inside a dark and dusty chicken wire enclosure, next to some very old (and very politically incorrect) figurines that had been used in early museum displays.

Within the mummy department’s chicken wire cage, there is a room. This room is sealed off from everything else, and inside is a pristine lab. It is temperature controlled, humidity controlled, and spotless. There were a few mummies laid out in the center of the room near some more coffins, and cases lining the walls.

One of the mummies was the “soap man” from Philadelphia. This fascinating mummy began as a man who was buried in a soil that essentially turned all of the fat on his body to soap. There he is, all of the fatty parts of his body preserved forever, still wearing his stockings.

After looking at a couple of the classic Egyptian mummies that sat out next to the soap man, we turned our attention to the cases on the wall. These cases were not long and narrow and did not look like they could hold what we think of as a typical mummy, lying flat with arms across the chest. Instead, one case had drawers full of mummy parts from the days when scientists at the museum would chop up mummies to examine them. (Now, they use medical scanning equipment to examine remains without damaging them.)

One of the dissected mummies was that of an Egyptian girl who had died at the age of sixteen. She was poor, so her organs had not been removed during the mummification process. In her abdomen, scientists found the skeletal remains of a full-term infant; childbirth appears to have been her cause of death. (In picture above the infant remains can be seen in the white box on the lower right side of the shelf).

In another cabinet there was an amazingly well preserved Peruvian mummy. I found her to be the most alarming of the bunch. The woman is seated, with her legs crossed and her hands clasped together supporting her head, which looks as though it is gently resting upon them for a nap. She still has all of her clothing and some of her hair. Apparently the ancient Peruvians mummified their loved ones and left them in a dry cave for a year. The completely dessicated remains could then be brought out and basically reunited with the family. Essentially, their descendants would sit them by the camp fire to participate with the living in religious ceremonies.

The last things we saw were mummified brains and shrunken heads. They were all fascinating, but the stink that came from those cases was slightly awful. It wasn’t the smell of death, but the smell of whatever had been used to preserve the remains, and it was simply not pleasant.

Top: an unfortunate missionary, Center:mummified brains, Bottom: classic example of a shrunken head