Florida: So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

I'm a sucker for animals, and so when I found out that there was a Gulfarium (Gulf of Mexico + Aquarium) in this part of Florida, I was pretty excited. We even managed to convince a local friend with a small child to come along so as to give us a reason for our visit. Of course, I was way more excited about most of it than he was, but that's beside the point.

I am a fan of animals, but I always seem to forget that aquariums are almost never as cool as you hope they're going to be. This one was no exception. It's clearly very old. I suspect they make 99% of their profits off of tourists who are in the area and, much like me, are suckers for this sort of thing.

It wasn't all bad, really. There were sharks.


Sharks do freak me out, but these ones seemed pretty tame. They were nurse sharks, maybe? I didn't read the label.

More exciting were the tropical penguins. Did you know that some penguins live in tropical climates? I sure didn't, but now I do. We did get to see a penguin feeding, which was funny because some of the penguins are apparently worried about their little penguin figures and are quite anorexic. Seriously, two of them refused to eat any fish. It was a bit worrisome.

The best part of the Gularium, though, was the sea lions.

I wrote a report about sea lions in the fifth grade. It was a very exciting part of my life. For years I wanted to be a sea lion, mostly because they were so graceful in the water and yet, unlike most aquatic animals, were cuddly and cute and had little whiskers. B thinks this is weird (he thinks most things about me are weird), and didn't seem to care about the sea lions too much. He preferred the dolphins.

Okay, yeah, the dolphins are cool too. We watched their little dolphin show, and I will admit that it was better than the sea lion show. Dolphins are creepy though, as you always suspect that they are using their dolphin intelligence to plan the downfall of humanity. The sea lions are clearly just enjoying themselves and wishing that they could eat the anorexic penguins next door.

Yes, I would still rather snuggle with a sea lion.