Butterflies and a dinosaur
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On Saturday, I took Lucinda and her friend to the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum so they could see the butterflies on the last weekend of the exhibit. They have the butterflies there every summer from the end of May through Labor Day. This was the first time I’d taken her to see them since 2004.
When we got there, there was a tremendous crowd of people in the the park, and we realized that there was a USC football game about to start in the Coliseum next door to the museum. This made getting inside a bit of an adventure, and if I’d known about this, we might not have gone today, but we were already there, so we made do.
The butterflies are in a large outdoor cage, sort of like a small aviary. They enjoyed seeing the butterflies flying around, and also finding some caterpillars, spiders, and other insects there. One of the docents helped them to find some of the more interesting sights, including the web of the spider that inspired E. B. White to write Charlotte’s Web.
Afterward, we went inside for the “Dinosaur Encounter“, where they had an animatronic dinosaur that came out and walked around the room. It was a pretty good effect. We’ve seen robotic dinosaurs before, most recently a few weeks ago when we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, but this was the first time we’d seen one that actually walks around free. It was quite novel.
Finally, we spent some time looking at the gems and minerals exhibit before going home. It was a fun afternoon.
