#pnnm

I also have had some pretty fun conversations with visitors. I’m usually behind the scenes, but I feed some critters who are out on the floor. Stinky the musk turtle is really old and needs help eating, so I get a lot of onlookers when I’m feeding him tweezers full of food. I get surprised looks when I truthfully answer the question of “What are you feeding him?”. Chopped baby mouse. Some people just look uncomfortable and walk off, but I often get great follow up conversations, like debunking the idea that turtles are all vegetarian, or comparing him to other predators who also eat mice. Also just the idea of mouse farms to feed the pet trade is a new concept to a lot of folks. Bags o’ frozen mice of all sizes people, mouse farms.

More volunteering at more museums! I'm back to volunteering at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum as well now. Fridays are for animal care. The animal care team know me well, and gave me a whole new set of critters to care for, so I can learn more about everyone. Before, my caretaking focused on birds, invertebrates, and a smattering of amphibians and aquatic turtles. Now my focus is terrestrial turtles, snakes and a different smattering of invertebrates, amphibians and aquatic turtles, plus two spoiled rats. I'm also privileged to feed Bob the endangered Blandings Turtle 2 pinkie mice every Friday. I'm still settling into the routine, so I pretty much spent the whole day there today, forgetting stuff and making lots of extra trips. At the end of the day though, everyone was clean and fed, and I picked up more snakes in one day then ever before in my whole life. (Cadbury, Toby, Coco, Bianca, and Cayenne). I also took hour out to have lunch with a bunch of staff and volunteers and just chat. It's such a welcoming place, I'm glad to be back!

Today was a holiday, so for my day off I went right back to the Nature Museum to volunteer at the taxidermy desk. I prepped a Northern Flicker to be used as a demonstration of preservation for the Summer Camp. I skinned it, but then put the body back in the skin and loosely sewed it back up, and popped the other bits in a baggie. That went back in the freezer, then I made a common yellowthroat study skin, just for fun. It was nice to be back at the desk, it's great to talk to museum visitors and show people something from behind the scenes.

I've now officially switched gears from being a volunteer to staff, whoo! I'm a head summer camp counselor at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum! Camp doesn't start for a couple of weeks, right now we are in orientation and curriculum design. It's been great to go even farther behind the scenes to see all the research and planning that goes into everything the Education Department does. From in depth studies of how different ages learn, to partnering with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to get coyotes pelts, they are a very cool department. Today a horticulturist walked us around the grounds to get us familiar with all the resources out there. He showed us an ash tree being killed by the invasive Emerald Ash Borer, and there was actually an adult beetle right there, along with the tell-tale V shaped holes they leave in the bark. Boom, firsthand experience with a new invasive species and its effect. Right there. Also we picked and ate an assortment of things, and like all plants in the onion (alium) family have super pretty flowers. Good stuff.

Bittersweet last day as a volunteer at the Chicago Academy of Sciences and its Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum before I become staff next week as a head camp counselor. I didn't get any photos of the critters at the museum because I was to busy telling them I love them in a goofy voice. You know. For my afternoon in the collection, I got to pull butterflies out of the archives. There is a new exhibit in the works for this summer, and I got to select nice specimens from a list of local butterflies to be part of that display. Also it turns out the collection has 3 drawers packed full of Red-Spotted Purples, which is about the most goth drawer of butterflies ever. I found a great one to add to the exhibit, no worries.

Big events this week in volunteering. Thursday and Friday was the annual Field Museum Members Night. I volunteered on Thursday, so the photo of my cup of tea is taken before the crowds hit. I intended to get a picture of all the members from my side of the fossil lab windows, but got wrapped up in project. My husband and I went as guests on Friday and got to see what all the other departments were up to, very cool. Today we both volunteered at Tea with the Turtles at the Nature Museum. Reid was out on the patio wrangling the huge spurred tortoises, and I was inside with all the aquatic turtles I take care of on Tuesday. It was a great event all around, and you can see my cup of tea as I gesture widely and tell everyone how cool turtles are!

Today I helped catalog a drawer of dirt. It was great! The soil samples were taken at different locations and depths back around 1908 in Chicago. The samples had slipped through the cracks and never been entering into their collection inventory, so I righted that wrong. Among the soil samples were two boxes with insect specimens. After some research I discovered they were from a big ecological survey in 1908, and had been marked missing in the collection! Whoo, I solved a mystery!