[Nhcoll-l] The Dangerous Museum

[Harding, Deborah]

Back in the mid-70s, the then-Florida State Museum was offered the carcass of a large male lion that had died in a roadside zoo. Initially they worked on skinning it in the one large workspace with little traffic--right in front of the air intake for the air conditioning unit. The museum was filled with the lovely combined odor of male lion and decomposition. 

There was no dermestid colony at the museum, so someone came up with the grand idea of letting wild insects take care of it on the roof of the University of Florida Life Sciences building, right next door. That went fine for a few days, until the wind picked up, and showered the passers-by on the sidewalk below with a rain of maggots. 

Great stories, everybody! The chairman of our department also did some forensic work, so I've other lovely stories, including the maggots-nothing-would-kill in the lab, but I think those are just a little too yucky.

Deborah Harding
Collection Manager
Section of Anthropology
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
harding at carnegiemnh.org
412-665-2608

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