Museum of Weird

"We've seen it!

What?

Mermaid!

Geez… Where? What is it?


I remember seeing many comics and stories surrounding Mermaids during my childhood days. I had never seen a real mermaid and always believed that it must be a fictious creature. But when we went to see “Museum of Weird” at downtown Austin, we were in for a surprise. The Fiji mermaid kept there looks like the torso and head of a baby monkey with the body of a fish. It is claimed to be real catch at a Fiji Islands by American Navy. There are many theories floating around mermaids, some say mermaids must be real since all things on land have their counterpart in the ocean — sea-horses, sea-lions, sea-dogs, etc. So therefore, we should assume there are also sea-humans. There is also a theory that, Fiji Mermaid was an example of a traditional art form perfected by fishermen in Japan and the East Indies who constructed mermaids by stitching the upper bodies of apes onto the bodies of fish. They often created these mermaids for use in religious ceremonies. Nevertheless, ths museum piece is worth a shot !!


There is another artifact in the museum which took us by surprise. It is a seed from a tree which is shaped like a women body. It was called Nareepol or something like that. It seems, there exists a tree bearing fruits that look like a woman and this amazing tree named Nareepol existed in Thai and eastern India. Naree means "girl/woman" in sanskrit and pol means plant/tree in Malay...meaning..women tree. There are also claims that, some species of this tree can still be found at Petchaboon province about almost 500 kms away from Bangkok. I read the entire story described below the artifact and it said once their lived a saint who was performing a tapsya beneath a tree. His tapsya (form of meditation) was disturbed by a women… enraged by this… saint cursed the women to become fruits of the tree and be eaten by all animals.

There is also a 3000 year old mummy which was claimed to have recovered from Mexican pyramids. The mummy is well preserved and it still has corpse retaining its shape intact.