First of all, let me say that I know early-morning people,
and I respect them for their noble, early-morning energy. They awake. They
greet the day. They walk the dog. They eat their
shredded wheat and they're off.
I am not such a person. Do you know how dark it is at 5am?
Dark. Inky dark. I grabbed the
darkest clothing I could find so everything would match, and I was off for the World Aquarium in the
City Museum to meet Barbara Orland, Tim Ezell
and the Fox2 News in the Morning
crew for the long-awaited shark
swim.
Even the sharks
were sleepy when we got there. I
thought: oh no, sleepy sharks; this is going to be lame. The big nurse sharks
were hanging out near the edge of the tank, docile as anything called a nurse shark
would be.
Then the truly
amazing Leonard Sonnenschein, designer/creator/president of the World Aquarium started telling us a few things
about nurse sharks. Seemingly docile, yes, but they've
been known to take a foot or part of a thigh from divers. Barbara, who has
photographed sharks in the wild, was
suddenly more awake than anyone needs to be at that hour of the morning.
But things got off to a more easeful start at the Amazon tank, where Barbara and Tim donned masks
and fed lettuce to a school of big, turkey-platter-size fish, which, Leonard
told us, were somewhat like piranha but without the
teeth. Barbara was a little nervous about the
live TV chat segments, but underwater, she told me, she felt totally at home.
Everyone moved back to the
shark tank for the next segment, but
much had changed since we had arrived. Apparently the
commotion of people and lights had tripped the
breakfast alarm in the sharks'
brains and there was much movement
and stirring of waters. Leonard informed us that the
sharks had moved into an "80 percent feeding frenzy." I asked, "That means they don't go into the
water, right?" Leonard informed us that if Barbara and Tim went into the water, they'd
be food.
Fortunately, no one shifted into a Werner Herzog-directing
mode ("Get in the water, Klaus!"),
and Barbara and Tim chatted up Blue
Planet Live! outside the tank.
As consolation, the
morning at the World Aquarium ended
with Barbara and Tim in the
sting-ray tank, feeding those marvelously graceful creatures tilapia. Sarah
Thompson--who is helping us out promoting SLSO Presents this season,
and who is the person who conceived
of and set up the oboist-in-the-water show--and I stood watching in suspense as a
sting ray approached Barbara, waiting to see if the
ray would take a piece of tilapia from her hand with the
camera running. The little critter approached, checked out the situation, nibbled a little bit, then took the
filet from her fingers--on camera, live!
I discovered that the
sun does come up every morning. I managed my way back to the
hall fueled by one cup of coffee and shark adrenalin. Barbara was warming
up her oboe before the first
KinderKonzert rehearsal, looking totally energized. The hall was already abuzz
with the phrase "80 percent feeding
frenzy."
