Volunteering; The Sixth Week

I have gotten all confused and befuddled. I thought this week was week 6. Turns out my head is a week late. Gah! Anywhooooo. Week six, what happened?

Oh yes! On the Sunday, the MCC had an open day! Myself, Lukas and Lynsey were around to show people around the Natural Science floor, and to speak to visitors about the work we are doing on the collection here. It was a very long day (I had been at work in the morning!) but very enjoyable. I got the chance to walk around the main store on my lunch break, and I managed to see quite a few items that I remember from the old museum. I also held a corn snake! Awesome.

Back in the MCC, Sarah and I continued to work our way through the boxes of 'stuff'. These contain all sorts of wonders, mainly miscellaneous bones! In one box, we found a massive slice of bone, which turned out to be a section though an Elephants skull. Impressive.

We also uncovered a box with Ox bones in.. They looked as though they had once been on a display board, and were in varying stages of being sawn, processed, turned and carved! We found several spoons, some teething rings and a blank for a paper knife. It was really peculiar, and felt a bit weird looking at it all.. Who would want an Ox bone teething ring?!

On the Thursday I was by myself, so I cracked on with the boxes. I managed to finish one box, which meant that we had finished one side of the shelf!! (But then we discovered someone else had dumped more boxes there, booo). During the course of the day, one box contained this:

A fish skull! Not sure what type of fish, I thought maybe a cod? That's my hand on the left for some sort of scale. It was really fragile.. All the bones were wired together, but there were so many! Loads of tiny bones in the middle, and bits inbetween other bits, extra plates tucked in places. Really amazing to look at and hold! It was really delicate - each bone was almost transparent, almost like thick paper. Amazing.