Guess what, guess what!!!??? I went to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago yesterday! I went with my friend Garrett, and his little brother, Aaron and our moms. It was our homeschool field trip. Yay! The best part is I got to witness a dress rehearsal of Fantasea, the multi-animal show. It had dolphins, beluga whales, humans, penguins and more. The first animal was a seal and then the humans, and then beluga whales, and penguins. Then there were the hawks that didn’t cooperate because they wouldn’t fly across the water to a perch. That’s ok, they told us at the beginning that there could be some glitches. There was a human who was dressed as a hawk who flew around on cables, too. And there was a girl in a yellow shirt who was given a present of a necklace with the aquarium’s symbol on it. Whenever the act was changing her symbol glowed. There was a human in a boat that looked like it was flying because it was on cables which you could hardly see. The girl got to ride in the boat, then helped the trainers with the animals. She danced with penguins, got to pet the dolphins and belugas, everything! There were lots of lights and music with the things, too!
Then we went to explore the rest of the aquarium. It was great, too. We saw the cute little fuzzy-wuzzy sea otters. I got to pet a starfish! It was awesome!
We saw the belugas up close – two of them are pregnant. When I heard that I thought, “Man, it must be hard to swim with a fifty-pound baby in your stomach.” They are pregnant for 14 to 16 months. That’s crazy! Humans are only pregnant 9 months. I think they’ve really earned a vacation. But those baby belugas are going to stay with their moms for at least a year. They probably won’t spend the rest of their lives with them because things will get too crowded in there, so the babies will probably go to a different aquarium. The belugas were also testing a new toy – a PVC pipe filled with rocks to keep strands of felt imitating kelp anchored. The whales kept rubbing up against the felt – it was so cute!
I also played with my friends in a submarine. It was funny because we kept yelling, “Back to the crystal cave!” and then, “Back to the the ship!” We also yelled out commands like, “Turn everything off!” or “Turn everything on!” “Go to the Surface “ “Go to the bottom”, “Use the squid slime!” We were using the squid slime to scare off sharks, squids and other giant creatures. We had scuba tanks, too, but the tanks kept falling off the frames.
We also saw a giant shark in the Wild Reef exhibit. Oh yeah, did I mention the sea otters? Sooo cute!
There is also local waters exhibit. It has stuff on the aquatic invaders in the Great Lakes from goldfish and zebra mussels to silver carp that can jump out of the water and hit people giving them broken arms or legs or even concussions. Ouch! One person has rigged up a fishing competition to go down a river infested with the silver carp and catch them with nets. The person with the most wins a cash prize. Other methods of stopping them include an electric force field across the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. I suggest you go to the Nab the Aquatic Invaders website to learn about your local aquatic invaders so you can do your best to drive them out. My favorite animal was the black and white tegu. It’s a type of lizard.
It was very large and had beaded skin. It was fun to pet but it felt weird. I pulled back quickly the first time I touched it, but then I immediately touched it again.
I learned a whole lot about it, like that it can survive pretty much anywhere. It eats small mammals like rats and mice, and all sorts of those pests. It also eats other things like insects and plants because it is an omnivore. It is native to Brazil – it lives on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Some of the critters in the rainforest can be nasty. They’re also really cool.
Outside the aquarium there was a big hill, and my friend Garrett and I rolled down it. All we could feel was ourselves turning and turning. We couldn’t control our legs - it felt as though they were paralyzed since we didn’t need to move them to roll. At the bottom I lying on my back on the concrete ledge and about to roll off where a bicycle would hit me but Garrett stopped me since he’d gotten down first. The hill was so beautiful.
Once we were done at the aquarium we went to get some groceries at Trader Joe’s. Then we were hungry for dinner so we went to an awesome store called Whole Foods. While we were eating pizza at Whole Foods a woman came up to us and asked if we wanted chocolate pudding. We had been talking with her so we weren’t that surprised, but it was still kind of a shock. It’s not sooo surprising since Garrett and his little brother and I did look cute together – all blonde and laughing and joking together. The reason she liked us is that we reminded her of her own children when they were little. She also said that we sounded like little birds, “cheep, cheep, cheep!” (That reminds me, what what did the canary say when his cage fell apart? “Cheep, cheep, cheep!”)
In the car Garrett let me play his MarioKart. I hope I get one for Christmas.
All in all it was a good field trip. I hope that I get to take a lot more of them. With any luck my next one will be to the moon. My mom says that’s not likely, but I’m sure it will happen one day.
