STATE OF MIND

The name of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Palms is an oxymoron--humans hadn’t made the scene in the Jurassic Era, not by some 150 million years. But, I soon discovered, that’s nothing compared to the exhibits. One tells the story of the Deprong Mori, a South American bat said to fly through walls, trees, even people. Another display illustrates the symbiosis that allegedly takes place daily in African rain forests: A stink ant is infected by a fungus that consumes its brain until it dies, and a huge, gruesome spike grows from the ant’s head.

I’m scratching my head when I meet owner David Wilson. A downsized Mr. Spock with a close-cropped beard and spectacles, he tells me the museum is not a joke but an educational institution. He doesn’t believe that the theory of evolution explains all the quirks of nature, a theme that “runs like a carpet under the whole museum,” he says. Nature as metaphor is his motto. As we walk through the place--a former sheepskin-products factory that Wilson and his wife, Diana, converted in 1988--strains of opera blend with the sound of barking. The last comes from an exhibit of a fox head: When you look through a viewer, you see, imposed on the head, a video of a man yapping like a neurotic terrier. The man, I learn, is a professional dog barker for film and TV. There is something striking about the earth’s most highly evolved species imitating a four-legger for economic survival. Do I feel the tug of that Darwinian carpet being pulled out from under me?