Unlock Portland's Unique Treasure Trove - Paxton Gate

0:00 So there are a lot of things that are unique to the pacton Gate stores. You know, we have a lot of specialty pieces as well that there are only one of a kind. So it's if you're looking to go a pasta Gate travel trail worth it to hit all three stores because every single one is a little bit different. Hi, creepy people, we have another spooky season bonus for you guys. As you can probably hear, I am not alone today. Usually I am with my co host, but today I am with Lilah and we're here to talk about this really cool spooky store in downtown Portland, Oregon, and maybe some other places called Paxton Gate. So can you tell us a little bit about how you're affiliated with them.

0:50 Yes, So I have been here at Paxton Gate for about five years now. I have pretty much gone through every position in the store at this point, so I've done our you know, I started off sales team, was in management for a while, and now I kind of do. A lot of behind the scenes things. So I teach our entomology hitting classes, I do all of our marketing, and I have a couple of products that I work on for the store. So we have a lot of you know, locally designed stuff, and some of that is done in house, and I am kind of one of the people that's. In charge of that. That's awesome. So you definitely know kind of the ins and outs of the store. It sounds like definitely, I feel like I have explored every corner of the store one hundred times over.

1:33 Do you know where the name came from. Yeah, So we are named after Sir Joseph Paxton. So the original flagship store, Paxton Gate, was opened in San Francisco in nineteen ninety two. The founder Sean quickly opened it up and named it after Sir Joseph Paxton. So he was the. Apprentice gardener for the Duke of Devonshire. He was kind of known for creating us like bridge between utility and design. So Sir Joseph Paxton constructed the largest glass greenhouse of its time. It was called the Great Conservatory. It was pretty cool, so it was heated by a separate structure that kind of pumped in warm water and air, so it was a true greenhouse. And then he upped the steaks and created the Crystal Palace. And the Crystal Palace was kind of one of the more famous ones, and it was designed specifically for one type of flower, the grape thorned lily, and Paxton was the first person to force the grape thorned lily to bloom out of its natural habitat by using those greenhouse conditions, which is pretty cool. So we were named after Sir Joseph Paxton.

2:42 The original San Francisco Paxton Gate was a specialty plant store and then evolved to kind of include a variety of natural, science based items. And then in two thousand and ten, our Portland owners and Ms Brown, who are longtime friends with the founder, Sean Quickley, moved up to Portland and they thought a store like Paxton Gate would be fantastic for Portland. They both grew up in families that were rooted in educational, curious, natured backgrounds and it. Just seemed like a perfect fit. So they started talking with Sean about the idea and came to the joint conclusion that it made sense to partner on opportunity. So we're actually separate companies from the flagship store in San Francisco.

3:28 Sean, the founder, has. A small ownership position in the Portland company, but both Paxton Gate Portland locations were our own separate standing thing. Oh wow, that's really cool though that it started in this kind of interesting way with the plants and things. Because I visited the store and I saw like the carnivorous plants and stuff. And all over the place. It was really cool. But that does make a lot of sense now kind of why you guys have that type of thing. Definitely, So I have a lot of carnivorous plants actually, so when I went into your sore, it was like, oh my gosh, new place to get my carnivorous plants because I have killed them all and I'm gonna need to restock.

4:12 So can you tell us a little bit about your supply of carnivorous plants. Definitely. Our carnivorous plants are really special. They are actually grown locally by a former employee of ours. Oh so we have a really good relationship with them. We easily have the best carnivorous plants in Portland, like hands down, there's no competition about it. They were beautiful. We have probably five to six varieties at any given time. So we have our you know, venus fly traps, the classics. The pitcher plants are kind of my personal favorite. I have a big beautiful bog in my backyard that is all supplied off of Pexton Gate carnivorous plants. You know, we have the underground ones, so the bladderwarfs, Tricularias, Mexican butterworts, penthees.

5:00 I mean, we have literally any type of carnivorous point you can think of. We also regularly do pop ups with our carnivous plant vendor, so they come down with some of their specialty kind of more unique varieties. They bring down someones that you don't really find anywhere. So Darlingtonia's are a fun ones that are actually native here in Oregon, which I know a lot of people don't know that we actually have carnivorous plants that are native to Oregon. I had no idea, but they come down and they talk about that and they give you, you know, care tips on how how to not kill your carnivorous plants. They're really hard to take care of, you guys. I kept them alive for a long long time, but I recently moved out and I had to leave all my plants at the house and so it's harder to come by and water them.

5:46 Yeah. Well, fun fact here, since. A lot of them are native here in Oregon. If you just put them in a dish of water outside, they go crazy. They love it. I keep my bog just out of my back and I've had to repot it probably twice in the last year because it is just putting out new pictures constantly. But definitely, we have so many guys and tips and tricks for taking care of any type. We have recommendations for well, you know, if you have a fly problem, we think these carnivorous plants are better. If you have a fruit fly problem or an ant problem, these carnivorous plants are. Better, the little sticky ones exactly.

6:29 My favorite trick when I had a really bad fruit fly problem was to get the a pinglicula or a Mexican butter work and just swing it through the air, swing it through a swarm of fruit flies, and it was so sticky that they would just get stuck on it like fly paper. Genius. It's amazing. I'm definitely gonna have to come to you guys when I get myself situated again and have My dream is to have a box, So like I'm going to ask you all the questions you come in directly to you. I have your email. I'm a Bog queen. I'm always you know pro Bog does the one in San Francisco, like sell the same kind of stuff or they completely different?

7:15 Yeah, you know, we have a lot of similar vendors. There are a lot of things that we do partner on, so if you visit both. I actually visited the San Francisco store for the first time. A couple of weeks ago. Your brain, it's especially my brain, but I was pleasantly surprised. There are a lot of you know, similar items, similar type taxaermy pieces, bones. But we, you know, as our independent company, have really grown to kind of work on our own niche and work on our own stores. So there are a lot of things that are unique to the Pacta Gate stores. You know, we have a lot of specialty pieces as well that there are only one of a kind. So it's if you're looking to go a packsa Gate travel trail worth it to hit all three stores because every single one is a little bit different.

8:00 I definitely want to visit the other Portland one. I can't even remember which store I visited. The bigger one is Northwest twenty third and that's the one that was opened in twenty nineteen, so it's about two and a half three times the size. We've got two different levels and it's a big store. And then our original Portland location, which was open in twenty ten, is on Mississippi Avenue and it's a little bit smaller, more compact, but there is just as much stuff in there. I went to the one with the freeze dried cat and like the human skeleton that was like in a suitcase and like half as Oh Matilda, Yes, Matilda, I got to hold Matilda's wonderful.

8:42 It was like you're letting me touch a human bones. Yeah, it was the coolest thing. I was so excited. It was my birthday when I went in, so I. Was just all, that is such a fun treat. We definitely we call ourselves, you know, a natural science museum, but you can touch everything and you can buy it and take get home at the end of the day. Ye you know. But our staff is just so excited to talk about every single thing we have in the store because we're also passionate about it and everything we have is just so unique and cool and we love to share it. I definitely wanted to know if you can tell the story of Matilda. Yeah, I mean, so all of our human specimens are retired medical specimens, so they come from medical articulators, and a lot of them are going to be dated to like pre nineteen seventy in medical articulation, the preservation's method.

9:33 Preservation methods have changed a lot since then. So usually when you see kind of darker color bones, they tend to be pre nineteen sephanies, whereas the wider bones are usually post Matilda herself is disarticulated, which means that she's not you know, a full skeleton in one piece, she's in several pieces in a box. We call her Matilda. We at Vaxtingag came up with that name. When you donate your bodied science, you become anonymous, so there is no way to track who you were in life or where you came from other than what we can tell by looking at the bones here. You know, we're not necessarily medical experts. However, we have had a lot of our employees to have really deep special interests in these things and have gone and done their own research and been able to give us this information. So that's how we know that she's a female.

10:27 If I remember correctly, she was I think in her like mid forties, and. That's a lot of what we know about her is just from what we can tell about the bones just by looking at them. But all of yeah, all of our. Human specimens were again retired medical specimens. A lot of the times when we get the skeletons in, they still have their medical markings on them. So we've had things like a bou Shane skull, which is essentially a skull that you can open up so you can open the sinuses, you can open in the jaw, you can open the school plates so you can see the inside of the schools, and a lot of these are used in medical studies.

11:08 So we've had, you know, dental school schools as well, where there are slices in the jaws that you can open them up, and they've got the veins and the arteries all drawn in so that dental students can go in and see where the blood best has come and connect along your jaw. Same thing again with the Bauschane schools. You are able to open up all of the different parts of the school so that when you're using them in a school setting, you can go in and you can learn about all. Of the internal anatomy of these things. And usually, you know, after schools or articulators or. Museums even have had these things for a certain amount of years, maybe they become outdated, maybe they're not as accurate as they were. You know, we learned new stuff about science every single day, and then they will sell them off, so us as a store are able to go buy these old medical specimens because they were you know, tired, they're not being used anymore, and that's how we end up with some pretty cool things.

12:05 Wow, I learned so much when I was there. Fantastic. Okay, So we kind of went over some of the items that you sell their, like taxidermy, plants, crystals. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on that you think people should know that you sell in your store. Yeah. I mean we really focus on all things natural science, so there's an area in the store for everyone. We have skulls, bugs, wet specimens, taxidermy, we have fine jewelry, plants, books, phones, We carry a lot. Of local artists. We have interactive science based kids, toys, fossils, minerals. I mean it's really you can be any type of person and come into a Pacston Gate and find something fantastic to take home.

12:53 What, in your opinion, is like the most, the strangest or the most interesting thing that you've had in the store. Well, we have sold a hippo to a bar that was up in Washington. We sold a giraffe to a bar down in Eugene. We have sold a cyclops of wet specimen kitten, so you know, a kitten with just one big eye. We've sold things like a walrus usk, which, if you don't know what an usik is, it's a penis bone, so it's a large vaculum basically. Okay, but we're very interested in those. Yes, we've gotten a few of those, and they're pretty cool.

13:35 They're fun because they're you know, about a foot long, and usually when we get those pieces in they're fossilized, so they're super old, over ten thousand years old, sometimes up to a couple million, depending. On you know, when and where we found it. But we've had a few of those, which are pretty cool. One of the cooler things we sold was this giant two hundred year old lobster. And when I say giant. The lobster itself was probably four feet long with very cool. When we got the specimen. The specimen itself was one hundred years old before it died, and then the piece was another one hundred year old, so it had been around for two hundred or more years, which I think that was probably one of my favorite pieces.

14:24 That is so cool. I want a giant two hundred year old love Who doesn't just you know, a nice center piece. What do they call it? A conversation piece. Yeah. Yeah, you come into somebody's house there's a giant four foot lobster on the wall. You feel totally at home. So you did mention earlier. The pinning classes, the bug pinning. Definitely, they're one of my passion projects. You know, they're sort of my special area of the store. But we do them quite a few. Times a month, so we try to do about every other week, and we do a variety of specimens. So every year we come out, you know, with some quarter at a time, and I try to keep them interesting.

15:08 So we'll go through spiders, butterflies, moths, we've done scorpions. We're trying to plan the lantern flies. Just really get a good variety of insects, so that again, if you don't like the creepy crawley stuff. You can come get a pretty butterfly. If you have enough butterflies in your house and you want to get weird with it, you can. Come to our tarantula pinning pass. But we talk a lot about insects in general, the history of entomology, insects and their place on Earth, so conservation, sustainability, and then you get to learn about all of the processes behind pinning and preserving your own specimen, and then you get to take it home at the end of the bus.

15:48 And so it's a really good time. I have some and I like not that I've pinned myself, but that would be the coolest thing to have. It's something that you did yourself. And then you can go find us other places and exactly little pinning collection. Yeah, it's like, once you get the method down, you can pretty much apply it to anything. And that's that's what we're here to help with, is how do we how do we apply this to other things in our life too. Is there any other classes that you guys offer? Definitely, So we have quite a few different workshops that we offer. One that we're really excited to host at the end of October is our taxidermy workshops, So we have three different taxidermy workshops going on a jackalope workshop which as of today October tenth still has space available in it, So if anybody's looking to come learn how to tax amize their own jackalope.

16:40 We've got space in that. When is that That is going to be on October twenty fifth, from twelve to six thirty. Okay, put it on your calendars. But we love doing our taxidermy workshops centers than a couple of years that we've done them. Now we're hoping that it's a continuing thing. Idea we get to have them a couple times a year. So you know, we have our newsletter that you can find through our Instagram and we update regularly whenever we announce new workshops and classes like that. So if you're someone who wants to get on the list first, you can definitely get notified to be able to get spots in any of our workshops. We've also done. We've partnered with Tulsa artist Tyler Thrasher and we did a Moonbeam Flora workshop where he came and hosted a bunch of students to create their own biofluorescent glowing flowers, which was really cool and unique.

17:36 He's a very special artist. He's actually also coming mid October, on October nineteenth, He's coming to do a book siting with us here. That sounds so cool, Like I want to ask how that works, but I feel like you just you would have to go to the class. You Yeah, you might just have to come to one of our workshops. If I out, I want all the secrets. We do have. Kind of a fun upcoming event as well. We're participating in AMSY after Dark on October thirtieth, which is after dark adult only experience where you go to AMSY, which is the organ Museum of Science and Industry. They are opening a new bug exhibit this month, so the Exquisite Creatures Exhibit, and we'll be tabling at the event with some of the items that you can find in our store, and then you get to roam the museum after dark, sip on some whiskey, see some cool museum exhibits, and shop a little bit at our store as well as some other artists, pop ups, vendors, food, drink.

18:39 It's going to be a really fun time. I've always wanted to go to that, Yeah, this is. Going to be our second Amsy after Dark experience, so something that we will hopefully do a couple of times. Again, if you just hoped on our newsletter, you'll never ever miss a facting Gate event. So I saw something about mystery boxes. Yeah, our mystery boxes are fantastic. I talk them up all the time, especially around the holiday season. So they're the perfect gift for giving to someone that maybe they have everything. Maybe you're not sure what to get this person in your life. Our mystery boxes are a great option. They are fully customizable, so you fill out a form online and you fill out things like your likes, your dislikes.

19:22 You get to pick your own price, so there's no price limitations. You could literally fill out in the box. I hate the color yellow, but gosh do I love things with multiple sets of eyes? And our team will take that information and run with it. So every single box is hand curated by our team. We usually give you a call to just a double check, make sure you don't already have anything, pick out which sections of the store you wo like the most, and we really just run with it. So our mystery boxes are a fantastic gift idea. You can even gift it to yourself because you don't know what's going to be in it. Yeah, So if you're looking to buy yourselves up in a little special same thing, just tell us.

20:04 All the things you like, your favorite colors, and we'll we'll run with it. That's a genius idea. I always see like the mystery box type things where it's you know, kind of like pre filled, don't you don't really know what's in it. So this seems so personal. That's amazing. Yeah, And I mean our team really loves doing it. It's it's getting to go shopping for someone else. Yeah, that's a great Christmas idea, So everyone keep that in mind because I don't know if anyone looked at the calendar, but Christmas is like basically right around the corner. So well, the good news is we offer complimentary gift wrap year round, so you can come in, you can come in mid March and we will Christmas gift wrap your gift for you, put it in your closet, forget about it.

20:51 That is great. That's actually a great idea to just wrap the gifts all year as you go. How much less stressful would Christmas be if everyone is that exactly. We're here to help, yeah, or not just Christmas, any holiday, any gifting, you know. So when I was there, they were telling me that like sometimes mediums or psychics would come by and like get feelings from anything. Do you know of any of those stories? We have a few we were reminiscing when we were kind of going through our notes about all of the spooky things that all of our employees have experienced. We have one piece in here.

21:31 It's called the hobby Horse, and it's real horse skin, but it's stretched over a child's toy. So it's one of those little horses that kids used to ride, you, like. A rocking horse. WHOA. I love him. I personally think he's just darling, but he is maybe not the prettiest thing in the store. And we had one. Incident where we had a couple of employees who were talking and they started gossiping about the hobby horse, and as I started gossiping about it, a boehead just flew off. The wall and crashed down on the ground.

22:12 And so now we say, you know, if you leave the hobby horse alone, it will leave you alone. Whoa, it's just throwing four his heads around. Yeah, that seems so creepy though. When you said that it was like horse, real horse skins stretched over a toy. I just got a visual of like human like he stretched over like a toy. You know, you're a little bit cutter than that. He's got, you know, a beautiful brown and white modeled pattern. He's got his little horse hair tail. Again, I think he's darling, I probably would think. And he's never done anything bad to me. He's never thrown anything at me. And that's why you're saying that you have to you're here that if you say he's not cute, he'll throw something at you.

22:59 I mean, if I look to my right, do I see him staring back at me? Perhaps? Oh? I said, Hi, can you tell me any other speaky. Stories that have happened in the store. Let's see we have. We have some antique tin types and if you're not familiar with tin type photography, it was a type of photography used I want to say, in the early nineteen hundreds before digital cameras were invented. So it's light flashing onto a tin background and it kind of superimposes the image onto there. But because the photography. Is so old itself a lot of the tin types that we get in are from sometimes the eighteen hundred seventeen hundreds.

23:43 They're very, very old. We have some employees who there are particular tin types that. Just you know, their eyes kind of seemed to follow you. But one of our employees is saying that there was one where every time she picks it up, she gets a little bit nauseous, which that is saying, yeah, I'm hands off of that. I wonder if it just it captured and trapped some sort of energy inside of it. What's it a picture of? They're people, yeah, generally, so they would be portraits of you know, individuals, sometimes their family portraits. You don't often get to see portraits of pets because the way that the tin types work is they take about thirty seconds of having to sit still for that imassion transfer. So it's really rare to find pet tin types. But we have lots of like Victorian women, Victorian men family portraits.

24:41 Not a lot of babies, I assume either the same reason. There's this historical showing of women taking pictures of their babies tin type wise, and they have to cover themselves in shawls so that they're not in the photo. But the baby I won't hold still unless mom is sitting there holding it. So there's these wide variety of tin types where you have this like ghostly shroud of a woman in the back and then this beaming little baby in the front. That's like kind of creepy. Yeah, they're as beautiful as they are, they are almost always a little bit spooky. Yeah, well, I think spooky and creepy things are beautiful.

25:23 So it's like one and the same for me. I know everyone doesn't feel that way. Probably my co host she probably wouldn't feel that way. She also like doesn't like phones, and I'm like obsessed with bones, so every time I'm like talking about, you know, phones, holding phones, holding a human hand, She's like, what is wrong, You're insane. But she's also kind of like one of those I call them like sponge people, where they just like absorb energy. So I feel like, if you're holding a bone, you can kind of still feel the energy of like what it used to be. So definitely, yeah, I feel like that's.

26:05 Kind of why she's she's scared of it, because she can feel it. Yeah, she's a little bit more sensitive. Do you ever feel that kind of thing when you're holding phones or something that used to be alive. I definitely I get that a lot, just in general. And I don't know how much of it is, you know, me imposing that in my own head, but I, you know, as the insect depending. Instructor, I get that a lot with our books. So you know, a lot of what I talk about is again sustainability. But I have just a connection with the insects that are on our wall in our in our store, and I just I feel like I can see how they were when they were alive and now they're they're here in a frame, and it's it's kind of like a second life to them.

26:50 You know. We talk about this with our like our wet specimens as well. Is that a lot of them, especially when we talk about the wet specimens, were natural death, so they passed of you know, illness. You know, sometimes we get younger ones that were miscarried or death in utero, or maybe it was someone's pet and they wanted it preserved. So we have all of these creatures. We have these snakes, we. Have sometimes like squirrels, hedgehogs, these adorable little things in jars, and it's kind of looking at the alternative of well this thing has passed, you can put it in the garbage, or we can kind of give it a second life, you know, now it can instead of rotting away somewhere, it is allowed to sit in someone's home, on their shelf, with someone who will love it and appreciate it eternally.

27:40 You know, these methods of preservation that have been shown that they can stay preserved for hundreds hundreds of years. There are like insect specimens that. I've seen that are two hundred years old that are still almost identical to the ones that we have, you know, alive today. So we're properly preserved. You're just you're looking at history. Yeah, and you get to look at well, this is how this animal was one hundred two hundred years ago, and kind of drawing those parallels between how they are today and it really it's just a connection to the past. Do you ever I don't know why this just popped into my head, but do you ever see any bugs like crawling on the bug decorations like checking them out?

28:25 I don't know, generally in the tax fermy and oddities world, that's a very bad sign. Oh really, yeah, So there's. You know, there are pests that will come. This is still, you know, an organic matter. So we do lots of regular pest control. But if you see bugs that are crawling on your taxidermy, that usually. Means that, uh, you need to do something about that. Oh, I guess that does make sense. I was just kind of thinking like they were like, hey, like, what are you doing in there. I've heard of rumor that if you have a giant framed tarantula on your wall, the spiders in your house will think it's real and.

29:05 We'll leave you alone. Why. Don't know how much truth there is to it, but I guess you have to come by a tarantula and try it out. Yeah, I feel like you're gonna have an uptick in your tarantula sales now. Perfect. That is really good to know. Actually, So you guys also have tarot cards at the store, correct. We do. We have a lot of different varieties of tarot. So I brought one of my personal favorites up here. This is tattoo Taro. We actually have that deck. Oh fantastic. We have a lot of different decks from different artists. Both of our stores actually have different varieties of decks too, So we have some local artists that have decks over at our Mississippi Avenue location. We've got some big artist decks, We've got the original decks, some really cool stuff.

29:58 But like I said, this one is personal favorites. So you're gonna pull a card for us today, definitely. Just in a little light shuffling here. And I'll send you my energy. I always tell the audience to send us their energy from the future. Perfect, all right, So we have our ace of coins here. Okay, that's pentacles. I think I believe you're correct. So our Ace of Coins means treasures, riches, prosperity, attainment, recognition, contentment, fulfillment. It may relate to work, pregnancy, childbirth, et cetera, triumph, profit, security, and its price, a fresh financial start or a new enterprise.

30:44 I feel like this is perfect for talking about this store. There was a lot about uh, profit, it said like profit. Right, Yes, yeah, definitely. Oh and it's such a beautiful peacock too. Visuals see the Ace of Pentacles as your green light. It marks the initial stages of manifesting your goals and assures you that you can truly achieve what you've set your mind to the world is your oyster, and through careful planning and determined effort, you can manifest your goals and desires. I feel like that's like the store. Yeah, definitely, someone's. Like desire and they've manifested everything that they love into one store.

31:30 I love that. I mean so many times we have people coming and they're like, that's so crazy. I was just talking about this the other day. I have to get it. It's fate. You are so right. I agree with that. I know. I think when I went in there, I kind of I say, I don't plan to buy anything, but you know, things always just call out to you. And one of the things. That called out to me was like, is it like a devil seed or something? Oh yeah, those seed pods? Yeah, the devil seed crazy And I was like, what is this. It looks so demonic in him, this is like from nature. Well, that's so fun too. Those were such a one off thing. That's the first time we've ever had them in the store, and I haven't seen them come by since. So really, it was definitely fate that you were able to snag one. Wow.

32:17 That is actually really cool to know, and I like randomly bring it up too. Do you sell any other like divination like pendulums or Ouiji boards. Do you have anything else in there? We have We have a lot of crystals, so we have a very large crystal section and we have a couple of different books as well that can go with the crystals, so that we'll talk about all of the metaphysical properties, spiritual properties, emotional properties. But we have just about any type of crystal you can imagine. So I know a lot of people like to come in and shop for their altars, do little crystal setups in that realm find things that kind of me to tate with them.

33:00 So we have like mold of Bte was a really big one a few years ago, but we have a nice selection of moldavite. But I always look like it's so pretty. So moldivite is this green, it's almost like a glass, so it's superheated. Essentially belief rocks will come down from it's. Like a meteorite. But when a meteorite hits the earth with sand will spray back up and heat in the atmosphere, and then as that comes back down it cools into glass. So it's this green sort of pocketed glass like mineral.

33:42 It's incredibly rare. It only comes from I think one to maybe three places in the world, but it's it's really highly charged in energy. So there was there's a big push for folks who are looking to kind of I think upending things was the big push for moldivite that it was a big one that leads you to kind of make those hard decisions. But definitely when folks. Come in and are shopping in the crystal section, I encourage them to just pick stuff up, hold it in their hands, you know, see see what happens, See what finds you? You know, Yeah, is that a skunk butt behind you? It is at behind me. Let's seeing here. I've got that guy there.

34:25 I pulled the skunk because skunks are one of my absolute favorite tax at ermis. But they're they're pretty cool. He's got your little hands hanging down here. So we have one of our coworkers. It's a big. Fan of dressing up the taxidermy and anything with their little hands hanging down in front of them is just asking to have bracelets. Oh yes, bracelets. Hats. Sometimes if you come into the store and you find a taxidermy with a little hat on it, and you will let you keep the hat. Oh that is good to know. It's like a little uh, what is it a scavenger hunt? Yeah? Exactly what else is back there? So I can kind of walk through the wall here actually on their.

35:09 Farloo, I guess yeah, far left, we'll say it's the left. This is a print from They are Antwerp, Belgium based artists. They're named Mothmeister. They are costumers photographers and they work a lot with They call it post mortem fairy tales, so they do a lot of really dark and kind of spookier artwork and then have these gorgeous haunting prints. They're actually coming out with a new book and twenty twenty five about all their artwork, and we're hoping to do an event with them, which is gonna be pretty cool. We think we might do music, we might do some food. Definitely going to be an artist talk and book signing, which is gonna be.

35:49 Very very cool. That sounds fun. I've got some show and tell from our bug classes, so I've got a big old piece of honeycomb here. We talk a lot about and our insect pinning classes. We talk about the bee decline, how native bees are so important for our ecosystem, for our gardens, and we kind of talk a little bit about what honeybee's role is in the ecosystem and how it's kind of misconstrued, and then we talk about some These are some of the largest bugs in the world. So on the top one here, I've got a white witch moth. This is a bird wing butterfly. And these are paper cutouts there. Okay, is that the actual size though?

36:31 It is? Yeah, I formatted them true to size. Wow, fighting with Microsoft Word for hours. Only a few tears were shed. Oh, but you did it. And then on the bottom here this is a replica of a fossil. So this is a dragonfly that was around in the Permian era. So back when dinosaurs are around, insects were so much bigger. So dragonflies over here this is about three feet long. It would be the size of that dragonfly if it were today, which is insane. Can you imagine that flying around your head? Yeah, if dragonflies were that big today, we would not have things like cats or small dogs or birds.

37:13 They would they would eat cats one d. Dragonflies will eat anything. Dragonflies will eat hummingbirds if they can catch them. Mantises will also eat hummingbirds if they can catch them. But they have three hundred and sixty degree vision. They have about a ninety eight percent success rate in catching prey. Something like a liar or tiger has about a twenty five percent success rate. Wow, And they are just voracious predators. They're really really good pest control, so they're taking care of all the things like the wasps and the pests in your garden. So as scary as that sounds, they are a good thing, and you do want them around. They probably won't eat you. You're probably fine. As long as you're not the size of a small bug.

37:56 Think you'll survive. That's a lot of what our classes are are. So many people come to the insect pinning classes and they say that it's exposure therapy. Yeah, and then I sit here and I talk about how amazing bugs are and how we all should love bugs all the time, and then they touch a bug for thirty minutes and they leave. Going, you know what, that actually did help? Yeah, it's not that bad. I used to be so scared of spiders and now like a giant spider was on the trash can today as I was holding the handle, and I felt like a little tickle, and I was like, what was that? And I looked under and there was a giant spider and I just got a stick and I put her in the bush. Yeah, and I didn't freak out one time.

38:38 I'm so proud of you. But I love like moths and things, so like spiders are growing on me too. And that's how it starts. We literally we call butterflies the gateway bug. Once you start caring about the really pretty, bright, colorful butterflies, then you start caring about the really pretty moths, and then you start caring about beat not so pretty moss. The next thing you know, you're saving the spiders in your house. You're building a pollinator garden in your backyard, and you're helping to save the insects. And you've gone full Portland on everyone exactly. Portlandia says, put a bird on it. I say, put a. Bug on Put a bug on it. That's perfect.

39:20 You guys should make stickers that save a bug on it. Done. Was there any last words that you have? You know, I would say to just come visit our stores. We're open every day eleven to seven. We're open longer during holiday. You can come in and ask literally any question you could ever think of, and someone in the store will jump over. The moon to answer it. Absolutely. We are just here to talk about the things that we love, like we we are here because we love what we do. We love the creatures that we sell. We love plants, we love phones, we love human skeletons, and we love the weird and the creepy things, and we just get so excited to be able to talk to anyone about the stuff we've got.

40:10 Yeah, thank you for talking to me today. And I can really attest to like going in the store, you can you can feel the excitement of everyone working there, and like I think I just like asked a question to the air kind of and like someone behind me was started talking to me, and then I started, you know, asking more questions, and then going along through the store and finding more people that work they're come look at this, and so it's it's a really. Cool experience going there. It's definitely not not totally what I expected. When I'm definitely yeah, and there's I mean, we love to just pull everything out. Of a case, you know. If yeah, if I'm behind the bug case and I get to pull every single bug out that's a good.

40:51 Day for me. Oh yeah. I feel like you go into like some antique stores and stuff and there's you know, no one there to help you, or people don't want to take some out because they just want to sit behind the counter. But that's definitely not what you're gonna get when you. Go to for sure game. Yeah, we definitely. We pride ourselves on our customer service. And again we're like a natural science museum, but you can touch it and you can put it in your hands and you can take it home at the. End of the day as long as you're nice to it. Everyone, you know, use your delicate fingers. We're not manhandling the one hundred thousand year old fossils, and we're being nice to the hobby horse. Yes, yes, I think that's the biggest thing I learned today is be nice to the hobby horse.

41:39 Oh, thank you so much, Lailah. I love talking to you. Thank you so much, Cassie and looking forward to hearing the episode. Have it Creepy Yes day. Bye.