A Walk to the Bean

Karl and I were at home on Saturday afternoon working on crafts. We had finished our Saturday cleaning, groceries shopping, and sleeping in. We heard a knock on the door, it was Zac. Did we want to walk to the Monte L. Bean Life Science museum on campus with them? We did. We have a goal to walk places more instead of driving, so we were both excited for the chance to get on with our new goal.
The snow has stopped here in Provo. There is still tons of snow on the ground. Because there is so much snow, there are many large snowmen. This is a fun one…a horse.
After much hard breathing while walking up hill, we made it! I realized that I really haven’t walked on campus since we moved to Provo. Really I hadn’t been on campus since EFY.

Then we passed this statue of Brigham on Campus. I had to take a picture. Years ago we stood in front of this very statue as kids and took a picture here.
I made Krysta and Zac take a picture here too. Zac was embarrassed, he thought he look stupid and touristy.

You can tell how much they wanted this picture…they didn’t even take Karen out of her stroller…but they look great, don’t they?

As we got to the top of the hill the bell town chimed…Come Come Ye Saints…it made me smile. It reminded me of Rexburg actually. I became familiar with LDS bell chimes there. It took me a couple of years t realize the chimes were just recordings of this bell tower.

We finally got there, we got to the Bean! As we walked in look what we saw…

Yes, this is a real live…Liger. Bred for its powers in magic. Ok so it is not live, but it is real!
Check out this bear! It is HUGE. Seriously, 15 feet high, at least! I mean check out Karl’s face, he is really freaked out!
Check out this buddy! I don’t remember it’s name…but Zac is read it’s placard to us…
Apparently it’s nose is perfect to protect it from the dust made by the herd…hum.
Karen didn’t like it…
Karl found some baby animals that, you know, he loved! Most of them were not babies, but just small animals. Like this pygmy hippo.
This little animal, the Dik Dik, was one of our favorites. Look at those little guys…look at there big eyes! These things are REAL!

Yes, Yes that is a baby sloth! It is a tiny stuffed baby sloth. If you look really close you can see a tear falling down Karl’s ruddy cheek.

This is a Capybara…head.

When Zac saw this head he freaked out. Apparently growing up he had a family friend that had one of these things. They took it home with them from a trip to South America because they thought it was a dog. They got it through customs with no problem. Over the next couple of years they figured out that it wasn’t a dog. It got huge. The family left on a trip leaving their Capybara and their Rottweiler (I think that was the kind of dog) home together while they were gone. When they got back their Rottweiler was missing. They found it’s bones behind the dryer after the Capybara had eaten it! Yikes.

Having said that…there were also Butterflies!

You can tell Karen also loved them. She just looks like she is having so much fun! Ha!
A flying fish…’nough said…except, yes, they are real!

So it turns out that I freaking love beavers. If someone asked me, “If you were an animal which animal would be?” I would definitely have to say… a beaver. I mean just look at him. They are so busy and cute. They build damns and nest, I would be a beaver.

Next we found a group of deer with FANGS…yes FANGS.
Did Bambi have fangs? No, but he would have if he had grown up in Africa.

We headed down to the basement. The displays down there were not as…inspiring as those upstairs. We did meet Master Shifu from Kungfu Panda though.

There was also this sad little guy.
I mean look at his little face. We were like…why is he so sad…then we saw his tail.Covered in stickers! And it leads one to question…why!?The downstairs displays got sadder and sadder. Here they seemed to be depicting a quail baby funeral…
Poor little guy.

Things just went down hill from there.

They didn’t even have the decency to give them glass eyes! Well at least they labeled them..?

Nice…a racist fish. He does not look happy about his name.

We finally got out of there and headed to the gift shop!

I bought myself as little stuffed beaver. I named him Kastor Malo. Angry Beaver. The word for beaver is the same in Albanian and Spanish. Kastor. The Malo is from the Luchodor episode of angry beavers…youtube it.

After we had made our final purchases, we headed back down the hill to go home. We made a stop at the BYU book store.
The boys waited while we shopped. Mom, this one is for you. This is Karen in her little fleece jump suit. This is one of the many layers her mother dresses her in while they are outside. She is always toasty warm.

Fun day, fun outing…good times in Provo.

4 thoughts on “A Walk to the Bean

  1. oh my gosh. and that was hilarious. I’m in the computer lab and I almost had to laugh out loud. I, as well, enjoyed the dik diks, but then the funeral? Wha happened?! Looks like a fun outing

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