Switzerland is starting to grow on me...

You may recall that I was a little conflicted about moving to Switzerland. Well, I'm starting to think maybe I could get used to this.



I'm working as a consultant, so I end up visiting various companies in Switzerland. The above photo (like the photo below), shows the view I see when I get off the commuter train and climb up the Swiss hillside to one of the companies I'm working with.



It's the most amazing thing!! I get off the regular commuter train from Zurich, hike up a hillside (on a public path) through a vineyard, pass through a charming wooded residential neighborhood, then take a path with green pasture and cows grazing on one side, and the other side is a protected wetland full of thousands of frogs. Then I arrive at a building that looks basically like the set of a sci-fi film to work on some super-high-tech stuff.

This whole set-up completely blows my mind!! Given zoning laws, I would suspect that such a place would be not only impossible, but illegal in the U.S., and I'm starting to question whether zoning laws are such a good idea...

Anyway, since my whole family consists of amateur biologists and amphibian enthusiasts, I decided to take the family on a weekend trip to work.

Here I am with Nico, carefully making our way through the reeds to see the frogs:



Leo was less enthusiastic about that part:



And here's one of the frogs we saw:



And Nico was psyched because he'd never seen damselflies before, but had learned all about them from his David Attenborough documentaries. He even pointed out two damselflies mating:



My husband recently expressed concern that all these nature documentaries have perhaps a bit too much sex and violence for a six-year-old kid. He may be right. Not sure...

All I know is that I had a great time! I've always loved observing frogs (I know I'm different), but I'd never in my life seen so many in one place! I also got to see them puffing their little green cheeks to call, too. All in all, a great day in Switzerland!!! :D

History of Natural History Museum

This past weekend we took the kids to the Museum of Natural History of Bordeaux:



This isn't really a museum of the history of Biology: it would be more accurate to say that the museum is itself an artifact.

Here you can get a real taste of what some of the earliest natural history museums were like.



This museum has been displaying animal specimens to the public since receiving a (donated) private collection back in 1791!!!

So some of these specimens have been on display for well over 200 years!!!



They look it too...

Although most of them are probably no more than a hundred years old, some of the stuffed birds have noticeably faded over the years.

The museum is a bit of a living fossil since they actually take out subsets of their various collections from time to time to do a temporary exhibit highlighting a particular continent or species. I have to admit it's a little creepy, though, to be surrounded by all of these dead animals that have been preserved with arsenic and shown in a display case lo these many years. Particularly the collection of snakes in jars (which look like maybe some of their formaldehyde has evaporated over the past century or so...):



Still, the kids liked the museum. And it's fascinating to get a first-hand feel for the types of collections the early naturalists such as Linnaeus and Darwin were studying.



If you come here, it's quite possible you may be looking at some of the exact specimens observed by Darwin if he ever made a trip to Bordeaux and/or if naturalists and collectors in England were exchanging specimens with naturalists in France.

Now that I think of it, maybe I should have taken a closer look at their collection of beetles...

City frog

This weekend we found a frog living in a downtown city park!!! I look for them all the time, but this is the first time we've actually found one.



This little cutie was in the pond of the botanical gardens of the Jardin Public in the middle of Bordeaux!!!


Photos courtesy of my husband, E.K.