There are museums devoted¹ to pretty much everything: bad art, instant ramen, hair. Now there is a museum in southern England devoted to excrement².

世界上什么样的博物馆都有，有收藏烂艺术、方便面、还有毛发的。如今，英格兰南部又有了一间致力于收集粪便的博物馆。

The National Poo Museum, which opened in March at the Isle³ of Wight Zoo in Sandown, was created by a small group of artists from a collective called Eccleston George. The group, which usually makes interactive⁴ exhibits for schools and zoos, was looking for a new project that could generate a trickle⁵ of income for its artists. The idea for the museum originated when a member, Daniel Roberts, was walking on a country path in Sweden and happened upon some mysterious animal droppings.

“国家便便博物馆”(National Poo Museum)今年三月在英国桑当的怀特岛动物园(Isle of Wright Zoo)开幕，由名叫埃克莱斯顿‧乔治(Eccleston George)的艺术家团体中的几个成员所创立。该团体经常为学校与动物园制作互动式展览，而创馆初衷是为了找个能给成员带来一点收入的新项目。这是他们的成员丹尼尔‧罗伯茨(Daniel Roberts)的主意，起因于他曾在瑞典的乡间小路上散步时，看到的一些神秘的动物粪便。

“Everyone stopped in their tracks to wonder what sort of poo it was,” Mr. Roberts said. “It ended up being from a lynx.”

“大家都停下脚步来猜想这是哪种便便，”罗伯茨说。“结果是山猫的。”

He was struck, he said, by how intrigued⁶ his companions were. “People are disgusted by poo, but there’s also this fascination⁷ with it,” he said. And so the National Poo Museum was born.

罗伯茨说，同伴们着迷的模样触动了他。他表示：“大家都觉得大便很恶心，却又无法不对它感到好奇。”国家便便博物馆于焉诞生。

It is more of an exhibit than a museum, occupying a single room at the zoo, where it will be open until the end of the summer; after that, it will go on tour. It features 20 examples of feces from different animals, including pigeon, meerkat and lion. Each sample is suspended in a sphere of clear resin⁸ that can be illuminated⁹ with the touch of a button.

不过这间博物馆比较像是一个展览，只占了动物园里一个厅的空间，开放时间到夏季结束为止。接下它会巡回各地展出。馆内展示了20种不同动物的粪便样本，包括鸽子、猫鼬，还有狮子。每个样本都固定在透明树脂球里，可以按钮点亮灯光来观看。

Before it is preserved this way, each sample must be dried. The bird droppings dried quickly, but a cowpat took about a week to dry out and the lion feces almost two weeks.

各个样本在用这种方式保存之前，都要先干燥处理。鸟屎干得很快，牛粪团要一周才能彻底干燥，狮子粪则要两周时间。

One of the more interesting samples, from a herring gull¹⁰, has a white object tangled¹¹ in it.

在那些最引人入胜的样本当中，有一个来自银鸥的粪便，里面缠着一个白色物体。

“The white part is the remnant of a plastic bag,” said Nigel George, one of the Eccleston George artists. “This tells a story of what human beings are doing to the ecology of a place.”

“那个白色的东西是塑胶袋残余，”来自埃克莱斯顿‧乔治的艺术家奈吉尔‧乔治(Nigel George)表示。“这给我们讲了个故事，说明人类对一个地方的生态会造成什么影响。”

The museum also features information on bowel¹² cancer and the importance of keeping sewer¹³ pipes unblocked and unclogged, among other helpful tidbits about feces.

除了展出其他颇有裨益的排泄物趣闻，博物馆也特别介绍了肠癌的相关资讯，以及保持下水道管线畅通的重要性。

“It’s had a huge resonance¹⁴ with kids,” said Bill Cane¹⁵, another member of the collective. “The poop emoji is super popular now, and it seems to be riding quite a bit on that.”

“孩子们和这个地方产生了很大的共鸣，”这个艺术团体另一名成员比尔‧凯恩(Bill Cane)表示。“便便表情符号现在超火，我们的博物馆似乎搭上了顺风车。”

In fact, Mr. Cane said, one of the children who visited the exhibit came clutching a plush-toy poop emoji.

凯恩表示，有个孩子来参观的时候，手里还真抓着一个便便表情符号的玩偶。