meet the beetles

Not everyone likes bugs, but there are many colorful beetles. Certain people have a sense of humour. At Cleveland's Natural History Museum, someone pinned an orange toy car among the beetles. Volkswagen's original automobile has been called that for a long time. Nearby there is a collection of bird nests and eggs, someone there put a tiny foiled chocolate 'easter egg' in one. Now, these are not the showstopper displays, they are quietly in the hall of the basement. Humour is where one finds it, and it is good. If i were to guess, and i am, i would say it is a 'Hot Wheels' or 'Matchbox' originally orange, and now burnished up. A fellow put his foto [click] of this same subject to the public, and it went national proly international on the innerwebs. I saw the foto, and remembered seeing it, and wanted to snap one myself.

I went to the museum to see the Poison exhibit from the New York museum. I especially wanted a shot of MacBeth's weird sisters, but the lighting available from a little camera does not do the best dramatic effect. The neatest display is the enchanted book of herbal poisons, whose pages tun and rewrite themselves [slide show magic]. The museum is busy now: an addition is under construction, new animal shelters are built, the outdoor guardian [earlier post] dinosaur has returned with a new paint job. It is made from the same cast as the original one from the New York World's Fair of 1964. There is a promise of Schreckengost's terra cotta pachyderms to be mounted on a finished wall.

Some of the ingredients were described on display cards, but the script was not quoted at length. Some of the Bard's remarks are not socially polite these days in certain circles. At least when i went, there was no sound effects--which would have been really cool. They missed the boat on this one.

[Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches] 

First Witch
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
All
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

All
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Third Witch
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.