As I’ve said before on this blog, one of my favorite parts of my job is meeting our visitors on a daily basis. This kind of interaction is really rewarding for me, and I hope that the feeling is mutual for those who do get a chance to stop by the Artifact Lab during open window sessions. So you can imagine how pleased I was to find this in my mailbox yesterday:

As soon as I saw this, I knew exactly who it was from. Last week I was visited by three brothers, Sean, Aidan, and Quinn – their Granddad brought them to the museum for a day, and after doing his homework, specifically came up to the Artifact Lab for our 11:15 open window session. They had lots of questions for me, and we talked for awhile about our animal mummies. I explained to them that we don’t need to unwrap these mummies to know what’s inside – x-rays show us that this rather nondescript mummy –

– is definitely an ibis, indicated by the characteristic long curved beak which is clearly visible in x-radiographs taken from 2 different angles:

The ibis’ beak is indicated here with red arrows

To illustrate this in the lab, we printed out one of these x-ray images along with a little drawing of an ibis, and we keep it next to the mummy for comparison. As soon as the youngest brother, Quinn, saw the picture, he quipped, “I wish I could color that!”. So I immediately handed it over to him and asked him if, when he was done coloring, he could share a photo of it with me to post on the blog. Well, he sure didn’t waste any time – not only did he send me his drawing (signed and everything):

but the brothers also included a very sweet, and beautifully illustrated thank you note.

What wonderful artists, and very thoughtful boys. Answering questions can be hard! But with visitors like this, it doesn’t feel like hard work-it’s just fun. Thank YOU Aidan, Sean, Quinn, and Granddad Dan for visiting me in the Artifact Lab and being the highlight of my day!