Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum

There are museums that are beloved, some that are simply amazing, those that certainly are worthy of repeat visits and then there are museums that generally are entirely forgettable...but apparently my children see things a bit differently than I do. In my younger years, when I studied the discipline of museology, it never occurred to me that someone could be so fascinated with taxidermy. Then I had kids.

This past week we visited (for the umpteenth time) the Monte L. Bean Life Science museum, otherwise known as the "animal museum"; as in dead, stuffed animals. We read the labels (which don't actually have much information about the animals), we watched the videos (which didn't tell us much more) and we talked and talked and talked about the various animals and the fact that they were all, in fact, dead. And finally I was done...but not the kids, no, no, they had at least another half hour in them because we hadn't made it upstairs yet. Why can't that happen in an art museum? In the end, it was a happy afternoon, which is why I would actually rate the museum with one whole star out of five. Jane, however, gave it 4, or maybe five, well actually she finally decided on 4 1/2. Mitchell...well he gave it 19 stars!