Today’s blog entry covers the second half of our family visit to the Museum of York County. First up, the naturalist center, which is the most difficult room of the whole museum for a dog! In the rest of the museum, the taxidermy is all behind glass or fences. So you can’t actually get up close and personal with it. In the nature center, specimens of taxidermy, bones, feathers, and all sorts of natural wonders are out in the open for you to touch (with the backs of your hands!).
As we came down the walkway into the room, we were confronted with three giant taxidermied bears who had their backs to us. Felix jumped back! Brad got a picture of him jumping. We stayed on the ramp a bit for him to smell and observe the bears from the back.
Then (with Felix more comfortable) we went down to confront the bears from the front. Brad got a great video! Felix was scared, but he made it through. He jumped away a few times when he thought the bear was moving (it was my hand with a treat), but he worked through it! Then Brad got some pictures of us in front of the bear!
We walked around the room some more, and Felix did a paws up in front of the Water Buffalo and asked for treats LOL! We walked around looking at the displays, and Brad got some great shots of Felix in a mirrored glass surface!
We also got some shots of Brad!!!! He is dressed mostly in white with blue accents, and he is under the giraffe, doing a selfie in front of some skulls, and in front of the bears.
Unfortunately the Ice Age exhibit (where they do theoretical taxidermy of animals alive during the Ice Age) was closed. And we had a while until the planetarium show. So we found some chairs to sit in and chatted for a bit! Brad got lots of pictures of us sitting and talking.
I should mention that Felix usually only sees people in Brad’s family during family meals which are at peoples’ houses and he is off duty. So he is used to saying hello to them. It was very hard for him to ignore them in the museum!!!! He kept wanting to jump up and say hello to them. It got much better as we were in the museum longer. But when we were sitting together chatting, at one point while I was looking the other direction, he got up and walked over to Nancy, pawed her foot, and then came to lie back down in front of me. It was so funny!
Felix also really wanted treats from me and was doing a series of behaviors likely to get him a treat like pawing at me, doing a paws up, sitting, and downing.
After a while, we exited the naturalist center and headed to the gift shop. It was pretty crowded with displays in there, so hard to get good pictures. We sat outside the shop while we waited to go to the planetarium.
Brad’s parents didn’t want to see the planetarium show, so they went home. We went in and had a hard time finding a good place to sit. I tried getting into the wheelchair area, but there were covered and taped cords on the floor there, and my strange Whill wheels were really messing them up. So I ended up parking in the aisle, letting Brad go sideways in the wheelchair area, and I, Nancy, and Tamara sat in regular seats.
When we got inside, I realized Felix had never seen a movie before in a theater! I thought that maybe a planetarium would be a good way to start since it would at least be a short show. But then the show started and there were giant things flying around on the ceiling! Felix watched the whole show!
Unfortunately there was a family with a baby and a toddler who came to the show, and the kids were babbling the whole time. I could only understand about half of what the presenter was saying about wavelengths of light and color. It was very annoying, but they left about halfway through. Then I could hear about 75% of what was said. Darn broken hearing aids!
Felix was doing so well in the planetarium, and then all the sudden they cut to a scene of two dogs playing! There were two dogs on the ceiling! Then the dogs came to sniff the camera which made it look like they were sniffing us directly from the center of the ceiling!!!! I was so nervous Felix would bark at the two giant dogs playing and sniffing him, but he was SO GOOD! He was interested all right, but not a peep!
Brad got a few pictures before the show started of us reclining in our theater seats and looking up.
After the show, we had to say goodbye to Nancy and Tamara. Outside, I let them finally say hi to Felix. Everyone was so happy to say hi! I hope we get to go on a family outing again soon!
