Mystery in the Ad

Mystery in the Adventure

Kiara Jerez @araxkia

10 F rom climbing inside attics to exploring in their workplace finding taxidermy animals, there was always something new to explore for the students at the San Bernardino County Museum. The students worked in Exploration center in which they took live animals into their own hands and cared for them. From snakes, roaches, to turtles and a bunny, they were surrounded by animals in the workplace.

During the first few weeks as interns, they found old boxes that were preserved and old filled with bird nests, they had to organize them with labels and store them in a safe keeping environment. They used marble seal to keep oxygen out of the boxes. The bird nests were for research and kept in an old condition in the past, so storing the nests in boxes will keep them in better condition after being decomposed after a century.

Students Benji Jose Aguilar and Mimi Karen

Billiones crawled their way into the attic of the museum to locate taxidermy animals (or mounted specimen) . Taxidermy animals were hunted for pleasure, and then donated over the course of several years. The two were protected by using tavik suits to prevent the dust and fight against the cold in the attic. In the attic, the taxidermy animals were stacked, the condition they were in weren’t the best to help preserve them.

“It was like an adventure, because I don’t think anyone has been up there really, in decades,” says Aguilar.

All of the students worked together to locate all of the taxidermy heads in the attic by using a ladder which measured approximately 10-12ft high. The students had to retrieve each head and move them to the proper environment in which they were safely stored. The heads come from sizes of large and extra large, from rhino heads to an african buffalo’s head.

“I was hesitate to pick them up because for a moment I thought they were going to reach out and bite me because they looked very real. The heads are half my size, so I couldn’t imagine how they would look with their body and how they were even killed,” says intern Billiones. The museum is no longer accepting donations of taxidermy heads because they can be donated from trophy hunters and it will be illegal to accept the heads without paperwork. Taxidermy heads are still being kept at the museum’s warehouse in mold from the land where they came from.

Despite how small the San Bernardino County Museum is, there is a lot of valuables to discover. “There’s so much money that gets put into a museum. It’s good to be exposed to that, especially if you’re going to work in the field,” says intern Melissa Suthar.

“When you come to a museum, you’re all like oh this is interesting, but nothing that it makes you really surprised or in awe, but you’re in the back and below you’re doing things that’s keeping the museum up and running it’s interesting because it’s something people can’t see only you and a few certain other people get to know more in deeper information,” Billiones explains her experience being an intern at the museum.

“I like going to the museum a lot so it let’s you appreciate it more, it’s not just set up it allows you to see everything behind the scenes,” says Jose Aguilar.