Like looking out the airplane window to see home for the last time, I examine the bed of fossils.  A population of organisms, a Pompeii of bugs, in stone forever.  Better than a movie.

I remember Bradley airport in 1979, leaving for Seattle.  Icy, winter night, headlights dimmed by sand and salt; the sound of plows and whooshing sand trucks on the pavement.   I can still see our house and its surroundings in Georgetown as we stepped away from it to move to Paris in 1993.  A going-away party for a friend at an old Seattle tavern:  an Indian, a prostitute, a pool table and Ken the garbage man.  My memories are like the fossilized beds, complete with neighbors, trees, cars and sidewalks; the smell of the lawn and barbecue.

We came upon the fossils unexpectedly last Sunday, the first sunny day in weeks.  We took a walk to the Garden of Plants and Flowers, passing through the Luxembourg gardens, admiring the full compendium of ponies and donkeys and the little orange and green cart.  The old toothless donkey, rarely ridden, broke into a grin as I passed him the morning's sugar cube.

Past the Pantheon we strode:  7 Euro entry charge, way too expensive for a visit to Foucault's pendulum, which I long to see again.  The world is turning.  Blair and I discuss the best way to get the Garden.

At the Garden of Plants and Flowers we pass the "Hall of Evolution" and the Dodo Carousel.  Kids sit on dinosaurs and rhinos, wooly mammoths and the single dodo, as the band plays on.

I try to see the living birds and animals from outside the menagerie, but today there is a Herculaneum project transpiring all around the perimeter.  I suspect it is something to keep people like me from sneaking a peak at a spoonbill.  Instead we seize a bench and watch four mighty-beaked crows argue over gizzard gravel.

As we walk toward the exit on the river, we both notice bones in the windows of a nineteenth century structure.  To our amazement, it is open and nearly empty of living beings.  This lovely beaux arts structure has two intensely pointed spires in the front.  The inside is amazingly intact:  clear to the elaborate flora balusters and railings.

Through the doors we find a cabinet of curiosities: a parade of skeletons from seals to elephants fill the center of the two story hall.  Mummified oxen, cats and dogs lie in glass cases.  The walls are lined with jars of pig hearts and Tasmanian devil jaws, a one-eyed kitten and monkey ears preserved in formaldehyde.  A collection of children's skeletons cautions not to touch.

If you dare to mount the ancient stairway , there is a little balcony from which to observe the anorexic display.  The architecture commands its own review:  unlike the renovated (beautifully) Hall of Evolution, this carcass is still marvelously intact.  It offers a sense of discovery, riveted members sheltering the bones of giraffes and rhinos, horses and hyenas.

On the next floor were fossilized bones and such -- the head of a dodo, petrified.  The museum, in the 19th century fashion, has almost NO information available.  Had we not seen the megacerous graven into the walls of the caves at"pair non-pair" years ago, we might not have know when/what these gigantic antlers were.

A trip to the third floor produced the most interesting fossilized early life forms.  Shell-like beings in surprising configurations led us to think of decorative details.  I find it amazing that nature produces different forms today than it did eons ago.   Mother Earth changed her computer program with demise of the dinos.

We slowly walked the halls of the graceful building, admiring a large-eyed reptilian form from the Burgundy region.  We waved goodbye to the monkey hand bones beside the door as the curtain dropped on our own day of discovery.

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
Turtle fossil  acrylic on canvas 16 x 16 inches