My fourth day in England I drove back to London from Leeds, arriving with enough time to get to the Natural History Museum for about an hour before it closed. There was a bunch of cool stuff I'd like to have sat down and drawn for a while, but wasn't in the mood, somehow. I ended up spending most of my visit in the Marine Invertebrate room, which was the emptiest room in the museum, it seemed. Me and a bunch of lonesome, weirdly beautiful shellfish and coral, regarding one another sympathetically across the centuries from behind glass.
This is a kind of lobster:
And this a squid:
Below is Number 45:
And Number 57 and 58:
These are Sea Cucumbers. Apparently when Sea Cucumbers feel threatened they spit out their guts and "breathing apparatus" at their perceived predator, coating it in sticky slime. They can then grow a new one. Which seems a small comfort somehow.
Lastly we have a Coelecanth. It's a bit out of place in this list, given its having a spine, but I thought it had a nice, sympathetic color. Apparently the people who know about these things thought the Coelecanth had been extinct for millions of years. Then they found some swimming about happily in the 40's. It's never too late.
After that I went for a walk in Hyde Park, which was very nice, but I didn't take any pictures
1 comment:
When I saw the black one with wavy legs I knew your were in the London Natural History Museum (I'd skipped the text, sorry!) That little dude's in my sketchbook from 2004. Nice to see him again!
Hyde Park's kind of cool as it's exactly how London was before the city grew around it. The land was never developed.
Glad you're enjoying your travels!
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