Saturday, November 21, 2015

Denver Aquarium

Amber and I squeezed in a November adventure today, despite the lovely discovery that sometime during the night, my phone decided to go nuts. 

When I woke up this morning, there were no bars and the "No Mobile Network Available" error kept popping up. Couldn't get or make calls or texts, but by golly, I could still surf the internet! Exactly NOT what I needed right before Thanksgiving. And everyone else's phone was fine, so it's not like it was an account issue.

Amber was on her way over, but Bob generously took my phone to the Verizon store while I was gone. You always love to hear, "The guy said he'd never seen anything like it." And, despite the Verizon store being packed with phones, do you think I got mine replaced today? Of course not. It's arriving via mail on Monday. So until then, I'm phoneless. Weird how quickly it becomes such a habit. I've reached for it countless times and while I was shopping at Target, said, "Lemme pull up the recipe... Oh. wait."

Anyway...

The Aquarium was fun and even better, free, thanks to mooching off Amber's membership!

This was the first tank and this guy just looked so forlorn. Alligator Snapping Turtles can stay underwater nearly an hour, but the way he was just hanging off the log with his head down...

Then I got close and he decided to show off.



The otters weren't doing much swimming, but I did catch one guy going in for a scratch in their den.






The big Grouper was hanging out, butt first as you approached. His little yellow friend there posed for size comparison:


Once you turned the corner, though, he was much more photogenic:





The rays were all hovering along the sandy floor until we walked up, then this one popped up and gave me the big "CHEESE" pose:





These purple and blues are some of my favorite colors, so I love the challenge of trying to capture them in motion.











Every piranha tank I've seen has been tall but open topped. I assume something about their habitat requires it. But this necessitates the big sign telling stupid (tall) people not to put their hand (or their kid's hand) in the water. 

never seen a black and white ray!
The Leopoldi Black Diamond Ray is a freshwater fish.


But why oh why must the Aquarium have a tiger exhibit? There's no way these big cats (there are apparently several that get rotated) are happy in this tiny environment. Sigh. Yes, they can get in the water, but it's just a really odd choice and the habitat looks really small.


I think I was getting the finger here.






the contrast on these little guys was so intense, the digital camera really struggled to keep up




























0 comments:

Post a Comment