The Freak Show Exhibit - Leavenworth, KS

I love freak shows! As a tattooed, pierced woman who used to have purple hair - I'm sure this not surprising in the slightest. So I was super excited to see the historical freak show exhibit at the C.W. Parker Carousel Museum. It includes pictures of some of the "freaks" - from giants, to a crab handed boy, to a woman swallowing swords. There are also artifacts from the tents - a horrifying little petrified mermaid (seriously, this thing looked more like Gollum with fangs than Ariel), a mummified toad, and a two-headed chick. It was deformed but still so cute and fuzzy! If it wasn't taxidermy I would totally cuddle it. Oh, who am I kidding? I still wanted to cuddle it!

One thing that caught my eye was the display case of shrunken heads. I really want to know how they were made. Call it morbid curiosity but I really badly want to know what they are made of (assuming of course they are not real heads). When I was a kid, my mom showed me how to make a fake shrunken head with an apple. These were obviously not the crude, fruit skulls of my youth. So if anyone knows how to make a shrunken head - please let me know!

Finally, there was an animal hidden behind a sheet in a glass case. The sign posted in front of it said, "Obscene animal. For adults only." I thought about it for a moment and decided I am an adult (legally anyway, I don't know about mentally). I lifted up the sheet and took a peek. Yep, the animal was obscene. But I'm not going to tell you what it was! You have to go to Leavenworth to find out for yourself!