Molly Holman Trickey has kept busy in the nearly two-year period since she was hired as the executive director of the Midwest Museum of Natural History in downtown Sycamore.
"It has been a roller coaster ride, pretty much weekly," Trickey said. "I can honestly say that in two years here, I have never, ever been bored at work."
The museum is home to more than 100 stuffed and mounted animals from North America and Africa, as well as a growing collection of live animals and hundreds of artifacts, geology specimens and other natural items of interest.
In 2011, the museum had approximately 8,000 guests. Trickey and her staff led field trips for more than 60 schools, presented 7];0 public programs and events, welcomed more than 30 scout and homeschool groups, hosted 30 birthday parties, visited 20 schools and libraries for outreach programs and worked with nearly 100 volunteers.
This month, Trickey's primary focus is on planning the museum's annual Groundhog Gala on Jan. 28, the largest fundraising event of the year. Last year's gala attracted more than 120 people to the museum, and Trickey hopes to have even more people at this year's event.
"A lot of our operational funds are raised during that event, so it's really critical for us," Trickey said.
While the museum was closed for cleaning, maintenance and housekeeping last week, Trickey took a break to speak with MidWeek reporter Curtis Clegg about the joys and challenges of operating the museum.
MidWeek: What are you working on this week?
Molly Trickey: This week is all about cleaning, stuff that we normally couldn't do while visitors are here like cleaning the carpets and waxing the floors. …This is our slowest week of the year.
MW: What is your background?
MT: I went to Northern Illinois University and majored in visual communications and I minored in anthropology. After that I went to work at a design firm and then I worked at the Burpee museum in Rockford as their exhibits manager … and now I'm here at the Midwest Museum of Natural History.
MW: What changes has the museum undergone since you came here?
MT: In parts of the museum, we have tried to make it more hands-on. We have also made changes to our children's area downstairs. …We have also put part of our really beautiful geology collection on display. We have done a lot with the live animals too – we have gotten some new animals and some new enclosures.
MW: What animals do you have now?
MT: They are mostly reptiles with some amphibians, and we have some arthropods. Right now we have some really neat lizards – our green iguana in the lobby, which is growing more and more every day, and our Chinese water dragon is always a crowd favorite. Of course there is Hercules, our sulcata tortoise. We are working on a new habitat for him because he's getting bigger all the time.
MW: How big is Hercules?
MT: Right new he is about 25 pounds, but when he is full grown he will be about 100 pounds.
MW: How much maintenance is required in your stuffed animal displays?
MT: I'd say about once a month we go in there. …We dust their coats and clean up the cobwebs and we shine up their eyes. It's really interesting how much more lifelike they look when we just get the dust off their eyes.
MW: What do you have planned for 2012?
MT: Our biggest event of the year is the Groundhog Gala, so we're getting ready for that on Jan. 28. …We have a silent auction and finger food, live music and natural history displays.
MW: What else do you have planned?
MT: We have that family overnight (overnight camping inside the museum) in March and "spring babies" coming up in the spring. We have baby farm animals … we also have a guy coming in to bring baby coyotes. In the summer we always do fossil digs out at the Vulcan quarry.
MW: What do kids seem to like the most?
MT: They like the live animals. When they come back on return visits they want to see how Hercules and Princess (a red tail boa constrictor) are doing.
MW: Do adults come by themselves to the museum, or do most of them bring kids along?
MT: We see both. We've seen adults just come on their own, especially the seniors. Some are bringing kids and some of them come on their own. They seem to enjoy it as much as the kids do.
MW: Do you have a working relationship with NIU?
MT: We have had a couple of interns from the past year who have come out of NIU. …Some have stayed on with us while others have gone on to similar jobs in other areas. We also had the geology honor society come out to do geology identification for rocks we had in storage. …We still have a lot of things in storage that needs to be identified, repaired or maintained.
MW: How big is your geology collection?
MT: When I started here we had about a dozen big cardboard boxes labeled "rocks" – nothing was numbered and there was no identification. These specimens were almost all identified and cataloged by volunteers.
MW: How much do you rely on volunteers?
MT: We just had an Eagle Scout come in and work on our outdoor pond, straighten the area out, put new mulch in and get some bird feeders going. …Volunteers, in general, are really critical. We couldn't get by without them. We have volunteers that help with live animal care, maintenance projects and working at the front desk.
MW: How many stuffed animals do you have on display here?
MT: We have about 100 upstairs, and then we have others scattered throughout the museum. We probably have 125 or 150 total.
MW: Do you have kids that come in scared of snakes and leave really liking them?
MT: It's mostly the parents. Most of the kids come in excited to see live animals, but when it comes to live snakes a lot of the parents are more stand-offish. But when we bring a snake out for the kids to see, the parents might get interested and come up and want to touch it. That's probably one of the coolest parts – to have the animals transform our visitors from being scared of snakes, to walking out and thinking "Wow, that was something cool and beautiful." That's a life-changing experience.
MW: How much volunteer time is required to maintain the habitats?
MT: It takes about two hours a day, every day. That includes water changes, feeding and cleaning. A lot of these animals come from humid, tropical climates so they need to be misted down or sprayed down. …Our tortoise needs to be taken out so he can stretch his legs every day. We have all ages – we have a third grader that comes in with his dad to help out once a week, and then we have teenagers and some adults. Anybody who is interested in animals can be trained to do it – no experience required. We are always looking for volunteers.
MW: Do you buy the food locally?
MT: Yes, we buy at retail. The funny thing is, in the grand scheme of things we go through a lot, but because produce goes bad so quickly, each week we might spend $10 on produce, but we have to make five trips to the grocery store. We get our earthworms from the bait section at Farm and Fleet – they have the best earthworms in town.
MW: Do all of the snakes have their own personalities?
MT: Yes! If you are around them long enough you learn that some of them are very comfortable and laid-back, while other ones are more nervous and prone to being frightened …We have some lizards that are definitely "people lizards" – they look for us when we go by, and they scratch the glass and want to come out and sit on our shoulder or be walked around. Others could probably care less about us.
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