Happy Hallowe'en!

To celebrate Hallowe'en, I took some photos of some of the creepy things we have at the Saskatchewan Science Centre. You don't get to see this stuff every day here! Just in October. And at special events. And if you ask. But, it's all decked out in an especially spooky way right now.

Our 2pm Family Activities this month have been held in what we've been calling the Evisceration Station. All of the activities this month have been dissections, so the title fits.We'll have our last dissections this weekend, so come see!

That eyeball is usually in what we call Demo Village, which is where our Science Explorers do their paperwork each day. The tank holds our two lake sturgeon while we wait to build their new habitat.

See all those jars? Want to know what is in them? Well let's see.

This is a Romalea grasshopper and it's about three inches long - can you imagine if Saskatchewan grasshoppers were that big? We actually have an entire bucket of these preserved in the basement. Yes, for real! They are dissected in workshops.

Aw, cute dead bat. I didn't have a chance to ask anyone about this, but we currently have two fruit bats in our Critter Cave. I presume this was in there once, before it died.

Ah, two tarantulas in a jar. Before we got Rosie, our current tarantula, we had Harry. She (also a girl!) died in June, so I'm not sure if one of these is Harry, or if they are older than that. Pretty neat, though. As for that jar of wicked spirits, well we actually do have two ghosts at the Science Centre! I'll have to find out the whole story from someone sometime, but on my very first day of work here seven months ago, two people mentioned the ghosts to me. I think these wicked spirits in a jar are fake, though.

The white blobby thing in the far jar is a sea anenome. Anenome is a really fun word to spell and say, once you've learned it. I finally learned both not that long ago. It's such a tough word for some reason! Here, I'll teach you. To pronounce it, it sounds like "an enemy". I have no tips on spelling though. You'll just have to learn that. I had to look it up for this post, actually.

In front is what looks like a big water beetle, but I couldn't on short notice find anyone here who could confirm that for me.Look at those hairy back legs! Super neat.

Aw, baby alligator. I would veture to guess this guy was donated to us. Because of this one I thought everything in these jars was fake, but no, they are all actually real.

Sheep eyes? Yep. This was what tipped me off that the specimens in these jars might actually be real. Last weekend the 2pm activity was dissecting sheep eyes. Did you hear me mention it on Z99? After we recorded that call, one of the producers asked if we were dissecting human eyes. I suspect he was disappointed when I said sheep. Also, that jar with the white cotton is holding Rosie's old skeleton.

You know, it's really hard to gross people out at this place. Go figure. Things that other people might find gross, or scary, we think are cool and interesting.

Well, how about ending this post with something a little more delicious. Today at lunch we had a little potluck among staff. Everything people brought had to be orange, green, or black. This cake was, I have to say, the MOST impressive dish:

It was yummy too! Everything was good, but wow this cake was pretty beautiful.

Happy Hallowe'en everyone!

Stay curious,
Collette

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