HAIFA, Israel: As her 4-year-old son perused the Israeli museum’s ancient artifacts, Anna Geller looked away for just a moment. Then a crash sounded, a rare 3,500-year-old jar was broken on the ground, and her son stood over it, aghast.
“It was just a distraction of a second,” said Geller, a mother of three from the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. “And the next thing I know, it’s a very big boom boom behind me.”
The Bronze Age jar that her son, Ariel Geller, broke last week, has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered. It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.

What could be considered every parent’s worst nightmare became a learning experience Friday, as the Geller family returned to the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel. Ariel gifted the museum a clay vase of his own and was met with forgiving staff and curators.
Alex Geller said Ariel — the youngest of his three children — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash last Friday, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
“I’m embarrassed,” said Anna Geller, who said she tried desperately to calm her son down after the vase shattered. “He told me he just wanted to see what was inside.”

The jar was one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbar Rivlin, the director of the museum.
She said she wanted to use the restoration as an educational opportunity and to make sure the Gellers — who curtailed their initial museum visit soon after Ariel broke the jar last week — felt welcome to return.
Nahariya, where the family lives, is in an area just south of Israel’s border with Lebanon that has come under Hezbollah rocket fire for more than 10 months, in a conflict linked to the war in Gaza. The family has been visiting museums and taking day trips around Israel this summer to escape the tensions, Alex Geller said.
There were a lot of kids at the museum that day, and he said when he heard the crash he prayed that the damage had been caused by someone else. When he turned around and saw it was his son, he was “in complete shock.”
He went over to the security guards to let them know what had happened in hopes that it was a model and not a real artifact. The father even offered to pay for the damage.
“But they called and said it was insured and after they checked the cameras and saw it wasn’t vandalism they invited us back for a make-up visit,” Alex Geller said.
Experts were using 3D technology and high-resolution videos to restore the jar, which could be back on display as soon as next week.
“That’s what’s actually interesting for my older kids, this process of how they’re restoring it, and all the technology they’re using there,” Alex Geller said.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Shafir, who was painstakingly reassembling the jar, said the artifacts should remain accessible to the public, even if accidents happen because touching an artifact can inspire a deeper interest in history and archaeology.
“I like that people touch. Don’t break, but to touch things, it’s important,” he said.
 

CHEYENNE, Wyoming: A “mega den” of hundreds of rattlesnakes in Colorado is getting even bigger now that late summer is here and babies are being born.
Thanks to livestream video, scientists studying the den on a craggy hillside in Colorado are learning more about these enigmatic — and often misunderstood — reptiles. They’re observing as the youngsters, called pups, slither over and between adult females on lichen-encrusted rocks.
The public can watch too on the Project RattleCam website and help with important work including how to tell the snakes apart. Since researchers put their remote camera online in May, several snakes have become known in a chatroom and to scientists by names including “Woodstock,” “Thea” and “Agent 008.”
The project is a collaboration between California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, snake removal company Central Coast Snake Services and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
By involving the public, the scientists hope to dispel the idea that rattlesnakes are usually fierce and dangerous. In fact, experts say they rarely bite unless threatened or provoked and often are just the opposite.
Rattlesnakes are not only among the few reptiles that care for their young. They even care for the young of others. The adults protect and lend body heat to pups from birth until they enter hibernation in mid-autumn, said Max Roberts, a CalPoly graduate student researcher.
“We regularly see what we like to call ‘babysitting,’ pregnant females that we can visibly see have not given birth, yet are kind of guarding the newborn snakes,” Roberts said Wednesday.
As many as 2,000 rattlesnakes spend the winter at the location on private land, which the researchers are keeping secret to discourage trespassers. Once the weather warms, only pregnant females remain while the others disperse to nearby territory.
This year, the scientists keeping watch over the Colorado site have observed the rattlesnakes coil up and catch water to drink from the cups formed by their bodies. They’ve also seen how the snakes react to birds swooping in to try to grab a scaly meal.
The highlight of summer is in late August and early September when the rattlesnakes give birth over a roughly two-week period.
“As soon as they’re born, they know how to move into the sun or into the shade to regulate their body temperature,” Roberts said.
There are 36 species of rattlesnakes, most of which inhabit the US They range across nearly all states and are especially common in the Southwest. These being studied are prairie rattlesnakes, which can be found in much of the central and western US and into Canada and Mexico.
Like other pit viper species but unlike most snakes, rattlesnakes don’t lay eggs. Instead, they give birth to live young. Eight is an average-size brood, with the number depending on the snake’s size, according to Roberts.
Roberts is studying how temperature changes and ultraviolet sunlight affect snake behavior. Another graduate student, Owen Bachhuber, is studying the family and social relationships between rattlesnakes.
The researchers watch the live feed all day. Beyond that, they’re getting help from as many as 500 people at a time who tune in online.
“We are interested in studying the natural behavior of rattlesnakes, free from human disturbance. What do rattlesnakes actually do when we’re not there?” Roberts said.
Now that the Rocky Mountain summer is cooling, some males have been returning. By November, the camera running on solar and battery power will be turned off until next spring, when the snakes will re-emerge from their “mega den.”