Dead Things Galore! By Devo on Aug 03, 2009 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

Know what I love? Taxidermy. I don't practice the art myself, but nothing says relaxed enjoyment like walking through halls adorned with long-dead exotic wildlife whose glassy eyes follow you around like silent sentinels from the otherworld. Know where you can find a TON of dead, stuffed animals on display? The Field Museum in Chicago. Sure, there are other things to see at the world famous Field Museum, but who wants to see some frivolous mummies when you could see the remains of the man-eating lions of Tsavo? The Field Museum has halls filled with world wildlife, and many of the exhibits are over fifty years old. It provides an easy way to see endangered and even extinct animals up close, without the hazards of actually going into the "wild" or traveling back in time.

If dead mammals aren't your thing, the Field Museum also has a wonderful display of dead dinosaurs (no museum that I know of has a display of live dinosaurs). You can walk through fossilized time and see what animals lived before the five major extinctions. Dinosaurs can be found throughout the property. They have Sue, the most famous T-Rex outside of Jurassic Park, as well as a life-sized standing fossil replica of a Brachiosaurus outside.

There are countless other things to see at the Field Museum, I just can't remember what they are. I do know that parents should keep their children on leashes though, because the place is large and busy. Also, free-roaming children are inexorably annoying.