toby of the day: animal preservation

The California academy of science closed right after jon and I moved to San Francisco. Well, maybe not right after, but soon enough that we never made it in. Anyway, it has opened again. On the opening day, the traffic thwarted our ride home from the airport, and the part of the day that we didn’t spend in a bleary jetlagged nap, we watched the hundreds of cars lined up outside our apartment, trying to get to the park, trying to get away from the park, or just trapped in the unexpected traffic jam. We got a membership and even though we have been three times so far, and the museum is not very big, we have maybe seen half of it. The line for the rainforest remains far to long to even consider standing in unless toby is sleeping and the planetarium supposedly has the potential to freak out small children. Instead, we spend our time looking at the taxidermied animals. I had never really appreciated these, because as long as I can remember I have found live, moving animals much more exciting. But apparently, prior to the time in your life that you can remember things, stuffed animals are pretty cool. They’re big and look like animals, but they stay still and sit right next to the window so they’re easy to spot. Toby especially likes hartebeests and lemurs. On our third visit he became vaguely aware of the living, swimming penguins at the far end of the hall of taxidermy, but his interest was quickly taken over again by his new buddy lemur catta who sits in a glass box under a looping video of lemurs. Our friend shelly is in Madagascar, working on a conservation project for some group that didn’t have the foresight or inclination to give them proper maps so I spend my free time trying to hunt her down on google earth. Still, I'm quite jealous, as I’ve always wanted to go to Madagascar. I tell toby this whenever he points to the lemurs, but he seems uninterested. Perhaps he knows that in Madagascar, lemurs run free in the trees, so you can’t reliably find them sitting in their box every Monday morning like you can at the academy of sciences. Or maybe it’s because he’s already moved on and spotted his absolute favorite thing at the museum, the stone cat statues outside in the lawn area. Or it could be that since he’s 15 months old, my rambling is nothing more than blah blah blah blah lemur blah blah blah. that's fine. I feel the same way when I listen to his stories too, so I feel like we have a mutual understanding.