Stuffed Stuff

Shelves of Zebras

I love this display. These zebras can be found at the Natural History Museum’s outpost at Tring. It’s a delightful museum, based around the collections of Walter Rothschild, a classic British eccentric aristocrat. There are pictures of ole’ Walt riding around on giant tortoises, with a lettuce leaf held out on a stick to encourage them to walk, and another of him in a carriage pulled by zebras.

According to the font of all knowledge that is Wikipedia, Walter decided aged seven that he would run a zoological museum. This makes me feel a certain affinity towards him, as I too had childhood yearnings towards museums, as proven by a school exercise book from around 1989, when I declared that by the year 2000 I would be working in a museum (I was out by 1 year - it was 2001 when I got my first museum job).

Anyway, back to the zebras. I rather like the weirdness of this picture, as if it’s perfectly normal for a gang of zebras to loaf around on shelves, and they’re just hangin’ out ‘till they find something better to do. You don’t have to do too much to a museum display for it to suddenly seem unusual, and putting a bunch of zebras on shelves together, when they’re usually in a diorama with a gazelle or two and a lurking lion, is just surprising enough to work beautifully.