Science museums are fun.

It’s one of those things that got embedded in me at a young age, thanks in part to the teachings of one science aficionado who goes by the name of Bill Nye (“Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!”) – so needless to say, to find a really good science museum can be a real treat.  Fortunately, I happened to marry a girl who’s a bit of a science nerd herself (don’t tell her I called her a nerd…), so we actually make it a point to seek out these types of hands-on locales that teach about how lightning is formed (the release of an electrical charge between clouds and the ground), and what the human brain looks like (kind of a wrinkly, grey sponge), and how many Earths could fit inside the sun (about 1.3 million)!

So that said, last month we took a rather impressive road trip that toured us all around the eastern United States and even into Canada, and thus it seemed only fitting that we find a couple of fun museums to occupy our idle minds along the way.  I mean, after stopping in North Corbin, Kentucky to visit the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken and then later at White Castle for my first experience eating their magnificent tiny burgers, we were certainly due for something a bit more educational anyways, and besides, how often do you really get the opportunity to dismantle a skeleton and then try to put the bones back together again?!

Anywho, we had decided that one of our stops on this wonderful, 3-week vacation from reality of ours would be a very cool science centre north of the border that I have fond memories of from my childhood, back when I was much shorter and slightly less mature than I am today.  You could tell that we were in Canada by the way that they didn’t put the letters R and E in the right order in the word Center, but I certainly wasn’t going to hold it against them, and as we would eventually come to find, there was actually a far more grave oversight inside the museum than we could possibly find staring up at the signage out in their dusty, snow-covered parking lot…

Now I don’t think that I’m surprising anyone by saying that Canada would be a “pretty cold” place to live, and by “pretty cold” I mean “really cold,” and by “place to live” I’m implying that people might actually choose to live there someday, but in the meantime I think that we can all agree that no creature, whether small as a bread box or large as a school bus, could really ever tolerate a climate where nine degrees Celsius is “A nice summer’s day, eh?!”

So then imagine my own incredulous amusement as we turned the corner coming into the museum’s brand-new dinosaur exhibit to find – I can barely even type it without giggling – Furry Dinosaurs! All of the usual suspects were there – Stegosaurus, Velociraptors, and even good, old Tyrannosaurus Rex – each of them decked out in something that you might expect to see Zsa Zsa Gabor wearing down the red carpet.  It was as if someone had taken all of my favorite dinosaurs and given them fur coats, and as I looked into their green, beady eyes, I think deep down inside they knew exactly what I was thinking…

I mean, sure, it’s cold up in Canada – we just went over that – but that’s why the Wooly Mammoth was invented in the first place!  You don’t see crocodiles and rattlesnakes and African Monitor Lizards running around today in a thick, protective coat of wool and fur … and why not?  Because they would look absolutely ridiculous, that’s why!  You can’t be vicious predators and also run around wearing fur – it just doesn’t sell the look. Face it – scales are bad ass, and frankly, fur just isn’t. If a pack of Velociraptors tried to attack a herd of water buffalo dressed like Joan Rivers, they’d have gotten laughed out of the Cretaceous Period faster than you can say, “Wow – Canadian money is a lot more colorful than ours…”

Of course, I mean no disrespect to our friends from the north and their mission to bring hands-on, sciencey fun to the Canadian masses – all I’m saying is that if that’s what your scientists came up with when you asked them to dig up some dirt on dinosaurs, you might want to ask them to take another look … just to be safe.  Or maybe think about getting some new scientists who haven’t been out in the cold quite as long – those guys can’t live forever, you know, even if they do have big, furry coats to help them keep warm outside!

Otherwise what’s next – the discovery of prehistoric pork that possessed certain avian-related talents? Poultry that made regular trips to the dentist??  Cows that sang show tunes when you milked ‘em?!  I suppose after the hypothermia sets in and your brain starts making furry demands of its own, anything is possible…