Mystic fish, no pizza

[fbhjr]

This morning my wife and I went off to the Mystic Aquarium .


We haven’t been in a while and have a membership, so it seemed like a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.
And, they have all sorts of interesting creatures.


They do have one of the things my wife really likes, a ray patting pool.


And, since we were there last they’ve started letting you feed them too. This made my wife happy.

And, it makes it much easier to pat them. Before when humans didn’t normally have food the rays mostly stayed to the bottom. Now that any one of those humans could have food, they spend a lot more time near the surface.


This is very good for us. My wife loves feeding rays, but used to only do it at Seaworld when we were in Florida. A place only an hour away, where we were already members, is a huge advantage. And, the ray food costs less and seems to have more in it.


One of my favorite places is the Beluga Whale exhibit.


They were not super active today, but it’s pretty warm for them.

When we’ve visited in February they’re much more active.

But, I still don’t mind seeing them just float along slowly.


And, they look like they’re doing a lot more under the water than over.


You can also count on at least one wanting to swim by and see who is looking in at them.


We were told this is the oldest animal on exhibit at the Aquarium.


It is a seal from California that is 32 years old. (Two of the Beluga are 31...)
I guess when you’re the oldest on display you don’t have to do tricks for your food and can just sit in the sun and yawn at people. I certainly didn’t begrudge him that.

They did have some far more active sea lions swimming around in front of him.


One of the things I like about the Mystic Aquarium is they have lots of outdoor exhibits that are very nice.


I’m not sure what this poor woman did to deserve to be locked up away from the visitors.


But, she had to stand behind the bars and feed a VERY large sea lion until the seal lion decided it was enough.

(The photo does not do justice to how large that sea lion is. I’d guess over 1000 pounds.)
He looks bigger with more of him out of the water.


I guess the penguins had been to the movies last night, but were now back in their habitat.

(Seriously, they were at the opening of Mr Popper’s Penguins in Hartford...)

My wife brought her camera too. Hopefully she’ll be showing her own photos!


I like the part where you can stick your head in the bubble under where the penguins are swimming.


I guess these are African penguins and used to a climate very similar to the one at the Aquarium. So, it isn’t super hot for them.
They have been breeding them at the aquarium and the one without stripes is only a few months old.


In their fresh water pond they had tadpoles as big as my hand.

Those will be some monster frogs. My wife said they are Leopard frogs.

I never thought of lilly pads as flowering.


They seem to have a very nice flower.


They had a tent full of birds where you could walk through with a stick of bird food.

My wife had done something similar when we visited Gatorland last December.
So we did it here too.
I’m not sure about Orlando theme park items to New England museums. But, they did pick the fun ones.

My wife is not big on birds. But, she said she wanted to try it. Sadly I had spent my cash for ray food tickets (although I hadn’t used them all yet), so we made the poor young woman at the bird tent get out the old mechanical credit card machine for our $6. (And, I thought it strange she insisted I put down my phone number in case my card wasn’t good for the $6. But, it’s her job, right?)

The tent has bird-locks to prevent them from getting out to the rest of the world.


You hold out your stick of bird food and birds come to you.


Big birds, small birds, colorful birds...


My wife were both in there with a bird in the hand and a camera in the other.


Some of the birds were polite.


Some would fight each other while on your stick.


This one ate from it’s own “hand”.

Of course it ripped the majority of food off the stick first. So, it was clever, but not good at sharing.

Inside the aquarium proper they had an exhibit of glass and fish, two of my wife’s favorite things.


I like the little color changing flounder. They have black sand on one side of the tank and white on the other and you can see the fish change from one to the other.


I like the turtles.


They had a tank with 4 blue lobsters.


This made us hungry, so we headed towards the exit, stopping only to feed more rays.


Then, we went and got lobster for lunch at D’Angelo’s.

OK, eating lobster after just seeing them on display might seem mean or something, but it’s not like the sushi place across the street from Seaword, is it?

When we got back to Worcester it seemed like we had been missed.

Orson really seemed happy we were back.

Comments

[ravena-kade.livejournal.com]

I love petting the rays at the Boston Aquarium. Too bad they don't let you feed them here in town.

I think Mystic has a Beluga program where you can pet the whales. My sister did this in Chicago and said it was great fun. They put you in a wet suit and you stand in a shallow part of the pool. The only think is that the water is COLD.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they do have that program in Mystic. I really want to do it at some point. It's more of a question of when.
30 years ago I scuba dove off Gloucester. I can only imagine how much colder Beluga must like it....

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

the bird exhibit wasn't there when i last visited, and it looks incredibly cool!!! i just went last summer with a friend who works there; the Belugas are my favorite, too, and he got me closer to them, in the access area.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

They said "The birds are back", so I assume it is not a full time exhibit.
If you like birds, I'm sure it is great. I'm only so-so on birds myself. But, it was certainly worth a few bucks.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

That sounds so cool! Maybe J and I need to make a visit.

Do they, if you know, have leafy or weedy sea-dragons? I know those would not be interactable, but they make me happy. :)

Tadpoles as big as your hand are probably bullfrogs, not leopard frogs- at least based on what we see in our mini-pond.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Neither of us remember any. And my wife is also very fond of them and proba Bly would have noticed.