Woo(l)f

We visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History today where they have thousands of examples of flora and fauna from around the world. This is a maned wolf from South America; my daughter liked it because it "looks just like Cooper." Never mind that this wolf was about five times the size of Cooper.

In the entrance of the museum, there is a fossilized skeleton of a dire wolf, an ice-age mammal. That particular skeleton at the HMNH came from the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. The tar pits are a fascinating (if not a bit cheesy because of the fake mastodons placed in one of the pits) place to visit, and my daughter was indeed intrigued by the whole idea. All day (and evening) my daughter asked me questions:

"What are those holes in California called again?"

"What's in them?"

"Why haven't I ever seen tar before? Where can I see tar?"

"When did the animals get stuck? Why?"

"Was Nana in California before the tar pits?"

"No? So that makes Nana really, really young, right?"

"Tell me again what those holes are called?"