Time to Wonder Podcast
Time to Wonder Podcast is a place where kids ask questions about museums and we find the answers.
Time to Wonder Podcast
Episode 2: Is that bear real?
In this episode, Ava, Lesley and Sue chat with Solange Massicotte, program Co-ordinator from the Kelowna Heritage museum. She's going to talk about the animals we see in museums. She will talk about where the animals come from, how they are cared for and why having them in a museum is so great.
Meet the podcasters, read our blog and listen to our episodes at timetowonderpodcast.com
Episode 2 Is that bear real?
Welcome to Time to Wonder podcast, a behind the scenes peek into the world of museums for kids of all ages, everywhere.
Hi, I'm Ava.
Hi, I'm Leslie
and I'm Sue.
And this is a podcast where kids ask questions about museums and we find the answers.
Sue: The big question today is, “Is that bear real?” In this program we're going to be talking about taxidermied animals. While there is no graphic content, it still may be disturbing to some children.
Lesley: So, Sue, you know that many museums include Natural History exhibits. And in fact, there are museums that are all devoted to Natural History. For example, when I used to visit in Ottawa when I was a kid,
Sue: I’ve seen Natural History museums too. I saw one in in Dublin, in Ireland. And I've also visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Lesley: But it makes me think like, what exactly is Natural History?
Sue: Well, you know, when you think about the words, you could think about Natural History as “the story of nature.”
Lesley: You know, we can learn a lot from the story of nature by looking at animals, fish, insects, rocks, plants, trees, water, even microscopic organisms. Anything that exists in nature. Some Natural History museums include outer space in their definition of Natural History since what goes on in outer space affects many things in nature. Just think what would happen if we had no sun.
Sue: That's for sure. Kids have lots of questions about the animals they see in museums. So today we're going to talk about some of those animals.
Lesley: Today's guest is Solange Massicotte. Solange is a program coordinator for the Kelowna museums. She's going to answer some of the many questions she gets about animals from the kids as they come through the museum with their schools or with their families.
Ava: Hi, Solange.
Solange: Hi Ava. How are you?
Ava: Glad I'll get to talk to you.
Solange: Awesome that you have me here. I'm excited that you invited me today.
Ava: There are lots of questions from kids about the animals they see in museums.
Solange: Awesome. Yeah. Do you have a few for me?
Ava: We have heard that the children who have visited the museum have named many of the animals.
Solange: Yes, you're absolutely correct, Ava. We actually have all kinds of fun names for the animals in the museum. What's great and what's cute about it, it's normally the students or the children that are visiting us that come up with these fantastic names that do our programs with us. One of them is Justin Beaver. So, we have a beaver called Justin Beaver. We have a Wolverine called Doreen the Wolverine, just to name a few. We've got the two goats are Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. I don't know why they called them that.
Ava: Because they’re rich.
Solange: Yeah, 'cause they’re goats. Yeah, like they're billionaires. I'm surprised they didn't do Bill Gates. But hey, the children speak, we pick the names that they choose. What else do we have? We have a lot of really cute ones. Stewart, the stoat, Martin, the pine marten. And of course I could list many more. But the one, our favorite, or the one that I always introduce the children to is Waffles. Waffles is our grizzly bear. So he has his little paw, and he always says hello to the children walking by when they come to see the gallery.
Ava: How old are like the people that like give like names to them?
Solange: How old are they usually? Actually, it's a variety of ages really. The vast majority of students that visit us are from kindergarten to Grade 6 and so it's a variety. Sometimes we have kindergartners who say cute things, like calling the beaver pelt a pancake. And then we have older students like in grade five and six and they're the ones that thought up Jeff Bezos for example, like they’re, maybe they're a little bit older. So it's really a variety of ages. That's a good question.
Ava: Are the animals real that are in the museum?
Solange: So they are real. And that sometimes visitors or students or children think they're not real, but they actually are real. They’ve just passed on or they’re dead and now they're on display. So what we do is we do something called taxidermy, and that's a process to make them look alive.
Ava: What is taxidermy?
Solange: So taxidermy, it's actually, I don't know in full detail, but what we tell our students, it's kind of a science in natural history museums and what they do to preserve or protect the animals to make them look like alive what they once are. So there's a variety of things they use: chemicals to keep the fur nice and healthy and sometimes they stuff it with inside different things. Like for example birds are stuffed with cotton to give them their shape. But other animals have kind of sometimes cotton with wiring or styrofoam and then Waffles in particular he's bigger. I asked the curator today 'cause I was curious to know how he was made, and he's – since he's bigger - he's kinda got some wood and plaster, and wooden panelling inside of him to make him shaped like a big bear. And then he has other things to kind of conserve him, like those chemicals. So, it's a big scientific process, which I cannot do, but there's people in Kelowna or outsource that can do it for us if we need the animals to be on displa.
Ava: Why are there animals in the museum and what can kids learn from seeing animals in the museum?
Solange: So, we think animals in the museum is a great idea because not all of nature you can get up close and personal or you can see it up close. And I think that's why a lot of natural history museums like us or the Heritage Museum, where we can show animals up close and personal. Like myself, I could never be close to a mountain lion or a lynx or big bear or, you know, because just 'cause it's dangerous. But it's neat to see them up close. And same thing with the birds and some things maybe that are flying far away in the trees, you can kind of observe them, kind of study them. And it's just, I think children find it fascinating.
Ava: Why don't you stuff fish?
Solange: So, this is the thing. We actually do stuff fish. So fish are kinda, you've might have seen it in some people in their homes. They actually stuff them, and they mount them. They mount the fish and they put it on their walls. And the thing is, I'm actually originally from the Maritimes, so I worked in maritime museums or museums with kind of aquatic life, and I've actually seen stuffed lobsters before. So, there's a variety of like sea creatures I should say, or ocean creatures that you can actually taxidermy and stuff, including the fish. So, it is actually there are some fish. We just don't have them at our museum on display at the moment. But I'm sure we probably have some in our collection.
Ava: Do you kill the animals?
Solange: We do not. So, what happens is the animals are brought to us. So either a taxidermist had the animals already made and created for the museum and we've got them that way, or people that the animals have naturally died on their own, or if they legally were hunted. In this case, Waffles was legally haunted at the time. They're actually brought to us for science so that we can study them and display them. So, we never, ever, ever, ever go out and kill the animals. The animals either passed on naturally or were brought to us, But that's like a common question we do get from kids. So, we make sure to tell them like, no, we love animals.
Ava: Where do you get the animals?
Solange: So, that's a variety of things. So sometimes we'll source out and and maybe talk to a taxidermist, someone nearby who might have some animals that we want for display. But then other times they're actually brought to us. People bring things to us that they think we might want to put in our museum, in our exhibit. And we actually have some animals well in our freezers. So, we still we have some animals that could be there kept frozen and preserved so we could, if we wanted to taxidermy them and put them on display at the museum. So, we sometimes get a lot of donated birds. So, after a while we say to people, “I can't take anymore birds” or certain types of creatures 'cause we already have those animals. But yeah, that's also an excellent question. We often get that question.
What kind of like animals do you have at your museum?
Solange: So all the animals we have on display right now are from the Okanagan. So we don't sadly don't have any zebras or you know, those type of animals, 'cause we don't have them here in the Okanagan region that are naturally of this area. So yeah, a vast variety of them.
Ava: Can kids touch the animals?
Solange: No they cannot. And that's because we want to protect, like we want to conserve these animals and have them for a very long time. So, we ask students and adults, not just students, we ask adults as well, not to touch the animals. Because we want to protect them so that we can study them. However, 'cause we understand a lot of students wanna feel the fur and it looks nice and shiny, we actually have in the education department, we have pelts or we have furs that people can touch, and those are some in particular that people really enjoy. We have linx, we have an otter. We have a beaver, we've got a raccoon. We've got a Bunny, just off the top of my head so you can feel what the fur feels like. Yeah, we have a black bear, so we have that opportunity for those like can't help themselves and have to touch the animals. Like the kindergartners.
Ava: What happens if an animal has like fleas or bugs?
Solange: So, this is something I asked our conservator. Her name is Megan and she says if it has fleas or bugs what they do is they actually freeze the animals or they freeze the taxidermy or fur, or leather or organic materials. And when they freeze it, what happens is it kills the bugs, but it also kills the eggs. So, if the bugs laid any eggs, it kills that as well and it kills the pests. And she said to me, she said when you put it in, you’ve gotta make sure it's contained like in a bag or something, so that any other materials in there, whether it's like you’ve got a few other taxidermies in there and you have many, you’ve gotta make sure that it's like if the bugs are dying that they stay on their own. Anyway, she was trying to give me the secrets of how to kill those bugs.
Ava: How long do the animals last?
Solange: So, hopefully if we can take care of them, meaning like we keep them, not handled like no one’s patting them or touching them, we can preserve them their taxidermy. We hope they last for a very, very long time. Actually, some of the animals that we have like I keep referring to good old Waffles, he's been with us since around 1987 or so. So, he's been with us for a while. Some of these animals have been 40 to 50 years with us and hopefully longer so that we can, you can study them. So maybe hopefully, Ava, your children or your grandchildren or their grandchildren, you know down generations can come and see these animals on display.
Ava: Thank you so much Solange for taking the time to answer our questions.
Solange: No, thank you so much. It was, it's been a pleasure. You have fantastic questions.
Sue: Thanks again to today's guests. Our Music was written by Kevin McLeod and is licensed under Creative Commons. For complete information, see our blog post at timetowonderpodcast.com.
Lesley: For more information on this episode, visit timetowonderpodcast.com.
Ava: If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe. Remember, next time you go to museum, look, listen and wonder.