Camden Aquarium

Sometime after we had recovered from our Christmas hangover but before we packed all of our loot into the CR-V for the Great Car Trek Back North we visited the Camden Aquarium with Baba, Tita, Tio Bernard, and Tia Cristina.

I'm pretty tired now and, to be honest, I don't remember much except for the smell of the hippos (guess what--they smell like poop), the color of the jellyfish (pretty awesome), and various minor tantrums that were eventually resolved, so I'll mainly share photos from the trip.

Taking in the fish.

Jellies!

Oh yeah--I do remember something. At one point we (Andres and I) were looking at a tank that contained lobsters and a few fish. I was pointing out the lobster and said something innocuous like, "You know, some people like to eat lobster." That was a mistake. Approximate conversation below.

Andres: "What do they eat?"
Me: "People eat lobster."
Andres: "How do they eat lobster?"
Me: (I can tell this is going down a road I don't want to be on.) "Well, you cook the lobster and then eat it."
Andres: "But what of the lobster do you eat?"
Me: "Well, you eat the muscles." (Is this even right? I don't eat lobster.)

Andres looks at me like I have three heads and I can see the seed of a thought being planted in his brain: people eat animals. Oh crap, I think, he's never had to confront this before. And I'm not sure that I want to introduce him to this concept in an aquarium.

Andres: "Oh."
Me: "Let's go look at something else."

He didn't press me on this issue, thankfully, and to be honest I don't know what I would say. How do you inform your child that dinner is, sometimes, a formerly-walking and clucking chicken? Or that in a previous incarnation your hamburger said "moo?" Perhaps the path of least resistance is just to be honest--we eat animals, plain and simple. Though that seems to introduce other, more vexing questions...why cows and not horses? Why lobster and not whales? The whole issue is making me realize that vegetarianism is a much easier diet to explain, even if it is significantly less tasty.

Big boy didn't feel like touching the small tiger sharks in the shallow pool.

Celebrating our visit with temporary aquarium tattoos.

She had something important to say.