A Home To Share

Volunteers and amateur collectors are invaluable to the museum. One such person was dairy farmer Norman Douglas, a shell collector, deer hunter, taxidermist, leather maker and natural history enthusiast, whose collection of “unusual marine species” was donated when he died. Much of this beautifully preserved and mounted collection is now on display in the Weird & Wonderful section of the museum, and one of the most interesting specimens is a large Tonna shell, home to a big red hermit crab and carrying large pink barnacles on its back. Curator Brett Stephenson was so fascinated by it that he and his wife wrote and illustrated a children’s book, A Home to Share, about the life of the creatures living in symbiosis on the shell.