If for no other reason, I love the American Museum of Natural History because it contains a web of seemingly endless nooks and crannies to explore. One, just far enough away from the main exhibit halls to go unnoticed by most visitors (it is not even denoted on the museum map anymore), is a collection of seashells from a time when neatly-arrayed collections of specimens set in place next to their identification labels formed the core of natural history museums. Most are relatively familiar, curled houses without their occupants, but there is one which immediately grabbed my attention the first time I saw it – an argonaut, complete with a reconstruction of the squishy organism which lived inside the shell.

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