There are very few things in life that fill me with greater joy than a visit to a museum in good company. This museum in particular transforms me from a 31 year old woman into a very excitable girl. Walk with me…

Leaves Turning in Fall Sun – Upper East Side of Manhattan

Stone Bridge around 77th Street – Central Park

Tree Roots in Central Park

Fish Guts Treated with Photo-reactive Colours

Scorpion Carapaces

Tiny Spiders in Alcohol

Red Spider in the Spiders Alive! Exhibit

Spiders Alive! was a good exhibit, but didn’t have too much new or exciting information about the creepy crawlies that I didn’t already know, for the most part. However, there were many tanks of the amazing arachnids and many pretty pictures.

Peacock Spider – my favorite

Wolf Spider

Orb Spider

Orange Spider whose name I have forgotten

Ladybird Spider

Diorama of a Chipmunk Nest – don’t you love dioramas?

Hall of Biodiversity

The Hall of Biodiversity is my favorite part of the museum. When I walk into this darkly lit room, I transform into a giddy little girl, so excited to see pressed flowers in frames, fish swimming through the air, acorns on a string, blown glass jellyfish and cast brass bacterium. Nowhere else can you take a turn around one room and walk through the Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species of most creatures on Earth. In my dreams, I would have a house that looks like the Hall of Biodiversity…a seemingly living, breathing account of life on Earth, how it relates and how it has changed.

Don’t you want to visit? Maybe you should.