The Museum of Natural Science was so big it took up a whole city block.
I loved to wander through the huge empty halls by myself and since my father was a curator there, I could do that whenever he had to stay after hours and work in his office.
That was the case tonight, and as usual, it was fun looking at the exhibits and imagining that the whole museum belonged to me.
My father's office was on the same floor as the new African exhibit which was in the process of just being completed. I was curious to see what it looked like, so I left my father in his office and went off by myself
The museum was deathly quiet as I began to walk. I had purposely waited until the guards had made their rounds so I could have the floor all to myself. They wouldn't be back for a couple of hours or so and I liked the feeling of being all alone in the great halls. And it would take me a few minutes to get to the exhibit area because the halls themselves were each as long as a city block and I would have to walk through three of them to get to the African exhibit.
It didn't matter, though, because I liked to walk the empty halls and hear my footsteps echoing through them. It gave the museum an air of mystery.
At the end of each hall was a ninety-degree turn and just around the bend of the first hall, a life-sized bronze statue of an old African hunter caught my eye. It wasn't part of any exhibit but stood in the hall all by itself.
I read the placard on the base. It said that the statue had once been part of a statuary group of hunters on a lion hunt. All the hunters had been young except this one. He was supposed to be an old hunter hoping for a last kill.
I looked up at the lined face. The hunter's eyes were focused on some distant point and the old man held a spear in his upraised hand as if getting ready for the lion to appear.
"I think you're going to be disappointed old timer," I chuckled. "The only lions around here are in the zoo!"
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