Your mom and I were invited to visit an open house hosted by a number of UC Davis' animal and plant life studies colleges. Since coming to Davis, we haven't taken much opportunity to enjoy the perks of living near a world-class university, so we were determined to change that!
 |
| The guy who invited us was Ernesto, the director of the Botanical Conservatory, so we started there. |
 |
| Inside the greenhouse was a jungle maze, with sliding doors separating the various climates. Tropical and sticky in one room, dry and hot in the next. |
 |
| They had a great collection of carnivorous plants, with their clever way of trapping insects. |
 |
| We hardly noticed the tiny poison dart frog. They told us these particular frogs weren't poisonous because they don't get to eat the same diet they would in the wild which allows them to manufacture their toxin. Beautifully blue! |
 |
| These furry plants felt exactly like puppy ears! |
 |
| Your mom is a big fan or Orchids, and the conservatory had a pretty assortment of them, as well. |
 |
| Our next stop was the museum of entomology, where insects roamed everywhere! There was even a research student who was raising bed bugs and letting them feed on her arm while onlookers gawked in horror! |
 |
| Your mom and I got our hands on some very distinct looking "walking stick" bugs. It seems there's a walking stick for every type of tree or bush out there, each one tailored to blend in with a different appearance. Mine was kind of cute, for a bug, as it moved slow and almost seemed a bit nervous as it stepped around on my hand. |
 |
| Curious kids peered into terrariums filled with millipedes, roaches, or spiders. |
 |
| Then we went to see the vertebrates at the Museum of Animal Biology. They had a huge collection of various specimens of birds and small mammals. It was kind of morbid looking over these dead and bound birds, but they assured us that all of these were found naturally deceased. Even in death, their colors were brilliant! |
 |
| I never did get the full story on this bizarre, prehistoric-looking creature. |
 |
| One assistant held up this lion paw to your mom's hand, for comparison. That's a big cat! We also got to feel the differences between otter, fox, and chinchilla fur (the chinchilla's fur was so soft you almost couldn't feel it!). |
