Aquarium of the Pacific

The beloved and I visited earlier this month, and you should go too if you can at all swing it. We stayed all day and looked at everything at least once, and actually enjoyed the children screaming with excitement. They screamed so honestly, it did my heart good to hear them, and usually I'm in the W.C.Fields camp about children. It was also merry fun to watch the creatures in the exhibits watch the humans. On a previous visit to the Aquarium, I watched an entire family of four hop around trying to encourage a cuttlefish to change color. The cuttlefish hung there, seemingly fascinated. I think another cuttlefish joined the first and watched too. When I finally turned away, I found myself nose to nose with a small shark who had been watching me.

There were sharks and jellyfish and sea dragons--leafy and spiny--and sea bass and otters and sea lions and sorts of everything else, but this trip I especially enjoyed the rays. At an exploration booth we were examining sharkskin, and various shark teeth (including a model of megalodon's hand sized tooth--I love those) and I was abruptly fascinated by the ray's lower jaw, its teeth arranged like a sample of tile for crushing and grinding. Later we watched the big ones eating with those flat teeth. The pattern of the ray's lower jaw teeth looked like something I remembered from a dream, and has stayed with me since.

The booth was run by a volunteer, who of course knew everything and found all of it intensely fascinating and was delighted to tell anyone about it. Man, I am here to tell you, you want to find out about something or need help in a strange place--if you can find someone who is volunteering there, you will be in the best hands possible. Remember this the next time you are stranded in an airport with troubles. Traveller's Aide folks will take care of you. So I'm chatting with this very cool woman, and she says,

"I'll tell you, the very best stress relief in the world is to spend a few minutes at the ray pool, petting the rays. They're just like puppy dogs of the sea. I stop by and visit, and I don't have any more troubles."

Well we discovered she was correct. At one pool, the bat rays in particular fairly hopped out of the water at my beloved in particular. The delight of the surprise, every time it happened, also did my heart good. In a different setting the bat rays would look like devilish creatures, but here they were utterly adorable. Puppies, water, but with no inconveniences of wet dog, yeah. Just coat the whole experience with chocolate and that would be perfect stress relief.

It must be really cool to be an Aquarium volunteer.