In America, today is the deadline for filing your taxes with the IRS. I don’t know if there is a tax museum, but trust me, even an accountant doesn’t want to go to that shit. So the next best thing is a taxidermy museum. We’ve covered it here before many, many times…you might remember this (squirrel dioramas) or maybe that (the world’s largest collection of stuffed dogs). Well, apparently there is a dead frog circus at the Wistariahurst Museum, a historic house museum once owned by a prominent silk manufacturer and his family, in Holyoke. Over the years the museum’s most popular object has been moved around quite a bit, from prominent rooms to tucked away corners of the house…and even hidden away in storage until the public demanded it be put back on public display where it currently sits in the visitors’ center. A dead frog circus is exactly what it sounds like: a diorama of four dozen taxidermic frogs posed in a circus scene. Some drive chariots pulled by mice and rats (and some even ride an endangered spotted turtle), while others trapeze above and play music. It dates back to 1927 when it was created by naturalist Burlingham Schurr, though no one is sure why, which makes it even more intriguing. According to the curator, most visitors convince themselves that they are not real frogs, but they are real, more real than a freakin’ reality show.
Wistariahurst Museum, Massachusetts
