Lord of the Rings and other things

Oh my goodness! This was such a beautiful and awesome film! I can’t even describe it in text, it was just so awesome! Juan, Baby, Alex and Chuy came to see it over at El Paseo. The movie was 2 hours and 59 minutes long. Wow! It’s so sad that I don’t have the words, it’s more along the line of “oh my god, and remember this part! And wasn’t this cool? And. . . . ”

Last Wednesday at the Aquarium was really amusing because of two things. We got a really nice update on the Giant Sea Bass spawning (only one ever seen in an aquarium, and we saw the footage). I think that in fact, it’s the only spawning ever observed of these guys at all. I dunno. Anyways, out of like 5 million eggs layed, they were able to get like 500,000 fertilized ones out of the Blue Cavern exhibit before they were swallowed up the the mighty powerful filtration system they’ve got going. Out of all those, only 15 had made it to their 29th day of existence – but they are all really glad. They don’t expect any to survive since this is the first time anyone has ever tried to raise Giant Sea Bass fishies. Erik said this is a great learning experience and that the AoP is really lucky to have the only pair of breeding Giant Sea Bass any institution. They keep spawning and they are under watchful eyes so that they can go in and rescue the fertilized eggs before it’s too late. They hope that this is the begining of a breeding program that will start to bring back the dwindling numbers of these guys around here.

The other interesting thing happened out in Lorikeet Forest. When I went in to the aviary (in which there are 79 crazy little Lorikeets that are ready to take off your earings and dive bomb on you in the blink of an eye) it was really weird. I could hear all the Lorikeets, but they were nowhere to be seen. I kept walking and rounded the bend and saw all of them in a corner of the aviary wondering what the hell was wrong with them. They looked so stressed and didn’t want to come down at all to be fed (which they love by the way, you have nectar, you are their new best friend) – it was just weird. So then I ask one of the volunteers who was there before me and she told me that it was because there was a hawk outside the aviary! Seriously, a hawk was chillin’ in a tree right next to the aviary net. He swooped down with a pidgeon in his beak and dropped the bird. He just sat there for like an hour or so and the Lorikeets where freaked! It was crazy because then out of nowhere, instead of the usual 5 or 6 birds swooping down and zooming through the exhibit scaring the be-jeezes out of people about every 15 minutes, it would be like the whole freakin’ flock swooping back and forth over and over out of seemingly nowhere. Then they would stop and hang out in a corner. They were so scared. Great thing about it was that I had no problems with any Lorikeets pulling off my earrings that day. 🙂