Children and Animals

I spent about two hours yesterday afternoon in the Monte L. Bean museum here at BYU. The animals there are such great models! They'll hold still forever! It's just a shame that nine out of ten critters are only heads. I would have stayed longer too if there hadn't been some kind of prepubescent summer program squealing through the museum. Don't get me wrong, I love kids and I got to draw something livelier and less taxidermied than old Monte's acquisitions. I even got to lie to children, which is one of my favorite pastimes. (No, the rest of the animals are just on the other side of the wall. If you turn around really fast, you can catch them blinking.) I had to leave because one little boy's mother thought that it would be really funny to give him six shots of espresso and then make someone else watch him all day.
It was fun to watch for a little while, but after he had run up and down the stairs six or seven times shouting about how the animals all had their heads cut off and where were the cheetahs and that one's a boy, know how I can tell? It started to get old. That museum is nowhere near big enough to escape that kind of constant, high pitched enthusiasm. Then the adult leader of this particular group of manic midgets sat them all down and tried to convince Sir Shoutsalot to help answer some zoological questions given them by the museum. I held on for about two minutes as this little boy jittered his way through an elaborate explanation of why prairie dogs are not really dogs (it's because they dig holes and don't bury things, in case you were wondering) and that the "dolphin fish" was definitely a fish. (No need to explain that one, of course, just common sense.) I left just as he was launching into his third round of That Lion Was a Boy, Guess How I Know?
Since then, I applied a quick color job to two of my favorite sketches from yesterday and have also added a blowgun and some tranquilizer darts to my art kit. Just to be safe.