Caring for the Collections
Throughout the months of June, July and August, a rotating team of ten volunteers logged over 180 hours to help us move specimens and museum cabinets & shelving, out of the retired transport trailer in which they’d spent 12 years in storage. They sorted and packed jars of preserved fish, frogs, snakes & mysterious sea creatures, trays of mussel shells, Vertebrate skeletons, boxes of pressed plants, bags of dry drifted material, and discovered many surprising treasures like walrus skulls, a stuffed Chipmunk, and a mummified Armadillo. On tables under a canopy set up beside the house, we carefully sorted and re-packed specimens into wooden trays and then re-filled the cabinets inside the shipping container. Then there were metal and wooden shelving units to empty and trailer to a second shipping container several kilometres away, and boxes and jars to haul there to fill the shelves again. Sturdy volunteers heaved 14 double-walled steel museum cabinets across the street...
