Sticky Step Fourteen: Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), 100 Queens Park - Part 1: Rock vs. Rat

And now, the beginning of a Human-Lizard battle so huge, I had no choice but to break it up into three parts to fully cover it. While Lucas is enjoying dinner with his family at Golden Diamond Chinese Restaurant, Bodyrocks decides to show his girlfriend, Josie, that he can appreciate Toronto's culture as much as anyone.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) at 100 Queens Park.

Not surprisingly, Bodyrocks' idea of culture is looking at the dinosaur fossils on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, but as he makes clear to the ticket agent inside the front entrance, there's no way he's going to pay to see them. Things turn ugly fast, so one of Majestic Rat's emergency patrol rats seeks out Lucas to let him know the Human-Lizard is needed. Leading him through Queen's Park and past the monument to Edward VII, they make haste to reach the museum before disaster strikes.

The equestrian statue of King Edward VII in Queens Park.

The equestrian statue of Edward VII was originally created by the English sculptor, Thomas Brock, shortly after the king's death in 1910 for the Imperial Durbar in Delhi, India (a mass assembly meant to commemorate the succession of the Emperor and Empress of India, King George V and Queen Mary). Afterwards, in 1919, the statue was installed in Delhi's King Edward VII Park (since renamed Netaji Subhash Park), but was removed, sold and reinstalled in Toronto's Queen's Park between the years 1967-9 where it remains to this day, standing at the centre of the park's several radial footpaths.

Bodyrocks and Majestic Rat squaring off in front of dinosaur skulls in the ROM.

Back at the ROM, Majestic Rat (along with several patrol rats and Stieb the alligator) attempts to hold off Bodyrocks, but Johnny quickly overpowers Majestic and sends him hurtling through the glass windows of the now-iconic Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, which was added to the ROM's main building during a massive renovation of the museum and unveiled in 2007.

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.

Arriving at the ROM's entrance just as Majestic breaks his fall by landing on Gruber, his other alligator subject, the Human-Lizard quickly runs inside with Gruber as backup, unaware that he's about to face down an all too familiar foe, who's now enhanced by an all too familiar reptilian regenerative power . . .

Enter: The Human-Lizard!

Next up: The royal rumble at the ROM continues in Part 2: Rock vs. Lizard!

-DE