The Range

Posted on by Thor

Clare Brown took her parents, Terry and I for a tour of where she does her research and work on the Louisiana State University. We started in the basement where she showed us huge freezers that house thousands of tiny test tubes full of bird muscle samples. These samples are used to find the birds DNA sequencing. Another basement room was full of formaldehyde filled jars with birds inside. That room would have made a good sketch.

Upstairs, Clare showed us her office which was a tiny cubicle. About four other researchers shared the same room. On the walls of the cubicle were hints of the exotic places the researchers travel to. On the same floor were the schools art class studios and stepping into those made me feel quite at home. The hallways were full of nude figure studies. Since it was a student break, I suspect only the worst paintings were left behind.

We then went inside the LSU Natural History Museum on campus.  Large dioramas with stuffed animals inside recreated environments from natural settings. The display for birds of the word was a tight hall where stuffed birds in flight were enclosed in glass cases. Only a stuffed owl had escaped the glass enclosure and he flew up towards the ceiling. The star attraction of the museum was a stuffed tiger. The school athletics mascot is named Mike the Tiger.

Mike I was born in 1935, he was purchased from the Little Rock Zoo
with money raised by collecting 25 cents from each LSU student for a
total of $750. Originally named Sheik, the new mascot was renamed in
honor of Mike Chambers, LSU’s athletic trainer at the time, who was the
person most responsible for bringing him to the school. Mike assumed his
duties as the living symbol of LSU only three days after arriving on
campus in 1936. Mike was kidnapped by four Tulane students. He
was not abandoned, the cage was not painted Tulane green, but decorated
with green and white crepe paper. A return
was negotiated, and escorted by police, Mike was returned shortly before
the game. Mike I lived for 20 years before dying of kidney disease in 1956.When you press a button next to the display, Mike I roars.

A huge room next to the museum is known as “The Range”. The room is filled with row after row of metal lockers. Inside metal drawers can be pulled out to inspect stuffed birds from every continent. Rachel is an avid birder so this was a birder’s paradise. Terry refused to go in the range. She had been here once before and Clare showed her the stuffed Cockatoos. They reminded Terry of our pet cockatoo, Zorro, and thus saddened her. She likes to argue with her sister that cockatoos have feelings just like humans. That debate raged for our whole visit. Rachel and Joseph inspected drawer after drawer of birds. Rachel got to hold and inspects birds she had never seen before. The birds plumage remains vibrant and bright and if kept as they are they will last hundreds of years. Some specimens are already that old. They say the eyes are mirrors to the soul. These birds eyes were missing. Cotton hinted at what filled their inner void.

Hotel Lobby

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We spent Christmas day in Baton Rouge Louisiana. Clare Brown‘s college professor invited several students, who couldn’t go home for the holidays, over his house for a lavish Christmas Dinner. Clare’s parents, Rachel Lawson and Joseph Brown as well as Terry and I were invited as well. After dinner the professor showed Clare a blow dart weapon he had picked up on his travels. The blow tube was perhaps three feet long. The darts were lethal metal with a plastic disk expansion at the end. He put a cardboard box across the room as a target and raised the tube to his lips. He exhaled quickly and the dart ripped through the box leaving a tiny clean hole. Students in his class study ornithology and they travel the world looking for exotic birds. One of their tasks is gathering specimens and that means cleanly killing birds.

Apparently Clare is rather good at killing, documenting and properly stuffing the birds for display. Using a gun to kill a bird would result in a highly damaged specimen with a large hole ripped through it. Nets capture most birds which are then killed by hand. Clare described one gruesome situation in which a bird just wouldn’t die.  A quick clean kill is preferred to reduce suffering. Clare took a turn with the blow dart. She missed the box. Terry, who had once been a professional French horn player, wanted to test her chops. Sure enough all those years of blowing into a horn payed off. Her dart ripped cleanly through the center of the box. There was talk of darting the foot high Santa statue but the fun was stopped short by the level headed.

We ended Christmas day in the lobby of the hotel. Clare discussed the premise of her thesis research and Joseph seemed intrigued to use the population estimate theories to figure out how many Sock eye salmon migrate to the rivers of Washington State each year. The more varied the genome sequencing in an animals DNA, the larger the population. So with a rather small sampling of genome sequences it could be possible to estimate a species population. 

On a different note, Rachel gave me a stuffed animal monkey whose arms are made of rubber. He has a red cape and if you wedge your fingers in his hands, you can pull his legs and tail to slingshot him into flight. The first time I did it I was shocked when he screeched loudly as he arched in flight. This was definitely a memorable Christmas present.

Drive to Louisianna

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On December 21st, Terry and I left for Baton Rouge, Louisiana to visit her niece Clare Brown who is studying Ornithology at Louisiana State University. Terry just purchased a Porsche Boxster that looks a bit like a shark with its black gill intakes and sleek styling. This was the first long road trip for the car she now calls Enterprise. There is no storage available in the passenger area although the fold out cup holders came in quite useful. The interior is surprisingly spacious considering this is such a compact sports car. It is a convertible, but the cold temperatures guaranteed that the roof stayed up. Terry handled the entire drive which took us all day. The temperature dropped drastically when we got to the Florida pan handle. A nice feature of the car is that the seats can generate heat if needed. That feature felt so good when we got back from a pit stop.

The school colors for LSU are purple and yellow, so Terry fit right in with her purple hair when we arrived. Clare took us to a nice Cajun restaurant on the campus and later, Rachel and Joseph, Claire’s parents, joined us. From the hotel, Terry and I hiked to the LSU book store where we hoped to find some warmer clothes. We were ill equipped for the frigid temperatures. Scarves and gloves were insanely expensive however so we braved the weather in out spring denim jackets and sweat shirts. Terry had warned me but I didn’t listen.

Clare has a quaint run down shack on the wrong side of the tacks right off campus that she shares with her boyfriend. Of course after a long day on the road, Terry and I were quick to crash in the hotel room.