natural histories

“… we should study every kind of animal without hesitation, knowing that in all of them there is something natural and beautiful” – Aristotle

Among the pinned dragonflies and spiny crustaceans we search. You trace your finger down the crooked spine of a dry seahorse and then marvel at the waxy crane eggs and the jars of crocodile embryos floating in formaldehyde. We discuss the success of the others: the cockroach, the scorpion, and the horseshoe crab and we wish to crack open their glossy exoskeletons and to poke around in the spongy matrix of their bodies. In the far corner of the gallery we see the tiny apparatus of Aristotle’s lantern sitting detached from the rest of itself, lifeless and immobile like an unemployed drifter ever getting closer to the whole of its being, yet too complex to be fully understood. I’d like to know its secret, its five-chambered evolution, its purpose—
but we are running out of time. We scamper to the reptiles and listen closely to the soft hum of a cicada pretending to be a rattlesnake, I call it an opportunist and rebelliously tab the protective glass that catches our reflection on its surface.