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Specimen of the Week: Week Fifty

By Emma-Louise Nicholls, on 24 September 2012

Scary MonkeyMy absence last week was due to a critically important Disneyland-fueled birthday bonanza, thanks Naomi for your super duper blog. The actual day of my birthday I was back in London, and so I spent it literally scaring myself silly at the London Dungeon. It may have been the clash of my Disney Princess birthday badge (displaying a ‘3’ followed by a suspiciously biro coloured ‘1’) with the general ambiance of the Dungeon but for some reason the staff decided I was in no uncertain terms a heinous witch and must therefore clearly be punished. Logically, I was subsequently tied to a pole and burned at the stake. As the flames leaped higher and the shouts of “Burn witch burn” got louder (pretty sure I heard my partner’s voice in the crowd), I started to think I should leave my lightly barbequed corpse to the Museum. I could hang next to the gorilla skeleton so students could compare the anatomy of gorillas and… witches. As I looked at the gorilla skeleton this morning, having miraculously survived my hocus pocus ordeal, I realised the specimen the gorilla is staring at also featured at the Dungeon. The oh so hilarious and not so secretly potentially slightly sadistic staff members aside, there are a number of residents of the London Dungeon that are far less scary and way more cute than the bloodied corpses that litter room after room. This week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)