FISH STORY
A friend and I went to the Georgia Aquarium on Sunday. It has been a rocky few weeks in Johnstown, and I felt a deep yearning to be near many creatures without highly developed frontal lobes and identifiable speech. What follows are a few brief impressions I had of the aquarium.
Each display has a sign next to it with a fact or two about the featured fish. Usually, this information was life span, where it is found and what it eats. I thought there should have been more information about stuff that really matters to the average Joe. For instance, one display should have read, "the red snapper is found off the Georgia coast and can grow to an average of 3 feet. It is best served pan-seared with an herb rubbing and wedge of lemon." Or something like that.
The Chinese otters were taking a nap, and so were disappointing. I went to their display fully expecting to see them frolicking about their pool, cute as could be. Instead, they were as lethargic as a bunch of opium addicts. So I think that when the otters decide to slack off for a bit, somebody should tie cords to their legs and tail and start manipulating the brutes as though they were marionettes. They don't have to be high-kicking like Rockettes, but they have to be doing something. Maybe they could be dressed like Cyrano and Roxanne ...
There is only one reason people want to see pirhanas: the feeding frenzy. They want to see large South American rodents stripped to the bone as the water is churned into a bloody froth. They want to see dread stories made fact. But these pirhanas just sort of herded together like a bunch of finned cows. They looked downright docile and none was displaying the fearsome teeth. Had a large South American rodent blundered into that tank, it might have received a glare or two, and it might even have been severely gummed by the fish, but there was scant evidence it would have been torn to shreds.
There was some talk about whether the fish looked sad in captivity. I would hardly expect that a creature spared the Darwinian horrors of nature would be sad. Indeed, if I were low on the food chain of the sea, I would be thrilled to learn that to enjoy a predator-free existence and to earn my daily bread all I had to do was promenade in front of gawking tourists. And I saw no sign of displeasure. Not once did a school of silverfish arrange itself into The Finger nor did it form letters to spell out S-C-R-E-W Y-O-U L-O-U-S-Y C-A-P-T-O-R-S.
The one tank we didn't see that intrigued me was the tank full of fish to feed the star attractions. I wanted to see this tank of the damned. There I might have seen genuine sorrow, but it would have been worth it if all the fish had been like Deepo, the annoying cartoon mascot of the aquarium. His leering visage was ubiquitous, and it made me want to test the lethality of the pirhanas by tossing a few cartoonists into their tank.
And perhaps if one of the cartoonists had struggled free, we would have seen the pirhanas talk avidly among themselves of the one that got away. It would be quite a fish story.
A friend and I went to the Georgia Aquarium on Sunday. It has been a rocky few weeks in Johnstown, and I felt a deep yearning to be near many creatures without highly developed frontal lobes and identifiable speech. What follows are a few brief impressions I had of the aquarium.
Each display has a sign next to it with a fact or two about the featured fish. Usually, this information was life span, where it is found and what it eats. I thought there should have been more information about stuff that really matters to the average Joe. For instance, one display should have read, "the red snapper is found off the Georgia coast and can grow to an average of 3 feet. It is best served pan-seared with an herb rubbing and wedge of lemon." Or something like that.
The Chinese otters were taking a nap, and so were disappointing. I went to their display fully expecting to see them frolicking about their pool, cute as could be. Instead, they were as lethargic as a bunch of opium addicts. So I think that when the otters decide to slack off for a bit, somebody should tie cords to their legs and tail and start manipulating the brutes as though they were marionettes. They don't have to be high-kicking like Rockettes, but they have to be doing something. Maybe they could be dressed like Cyrano and Roxanne ...
There is only one reason people want to see pirhanas: the feeding frenzy. They want to see large South American rodents stripped to the bone as the water is churned into a bloody froth. They want to see dread stories made fact. But these pirhanas just sort of herded together like a bunch of finned cows. They looked downright docile and none was displaying the fearsome teeth. Had a large South American rodent blundered into that tank, it might have received a glare or two, and it might even have been severely gummed by the fish, but there was scant evidence it would have been torn to shreds.
There was some talk about whether the fish looked sad in captivity. I would hardly expect that a creature spared the Darwinian horrors of nature would be sad. Indeed, if I were low on the food chain of the sea, I would be thrilled to learn that to enjoy a predator-free existence and to earn my daily bread all I had to do was promenade in front of gawking tourists. And I saw no sign of displeasure. Not once did a school of silverfish arrange itself into The Finger nor did it form letters to spell out S-C-R-E-W Y-O-U L-O-U-S-Y C-A-P-T-O-R-S.
The one tank we didn't see that intrigued me was the tank full of fish to feed the star attractions. I wanted to see this tank of the damned. There I might have seen genuine sorrow, but it would have been worth it if all the fish had been like Deepo, the annoying cartoon mascot of the aquarium. His leering visage was ubiquitous, and it made me want to test the lethality of the pirhanas by tossing a few cartoonists into their tank.
And perhaps if one of the cartoonists had struggled free, we would have seen the pirhanas talk avidly among themselves of the one that got away. It would be quite a fish story.
posted by John Parnell at 4:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home