WELCOME ABOARD!

Exhumed, just for your viewing pleasure, here at the Student Union of the University of Missouri, are the bones of Lieutenant Odysseus (Oody) of the 68th branch of the Missouri Navy. Witness the pop-up museum that tells his life story through found artifacts and a one-of-a-kind video/light show.

He’s the local, meglodonic missing link between other well-documented megafaunas, such as the Wels and Mekong catfish. Allow yourself to be blown out of the water by this once buried beast, and wonder how could anyone let such a marvelous tale sit forgotten at the bottom of the Missouri river?

Despite his mythic proportions, it's even easier to fall in love with his story from beginning to end. This fishy obituary compels viewers of all kinds’ often internal empathy to the surface, a bait and switch of incredibility, acceptance, and communal compassion. In reminiscence of whale falls--another megafauna’s peculiar death that preserves the body until it reaches the water’s floor--Oody’s demise means life was not lost but reincarnated anew. Who knew he could be a friend to river life and humans alike?

But his work with humans isn’t done yet, no siree. If his unfamiliar perspective can be viewed with humanity, Oody interjects, then your neighbors’ can be too. So, put your arm around each other, take a seat, or just take a wander around to allow questions of storytelling immortality, its ethicality, and our shared humanity to make waves within you.