playing catch-up, part 2.

Recounting all the past events that have happened in the last year and a half. In no particular order. Part Two.

At the aquarium, you can touch shrimp. For some reason, people have a hard time identifying shrimp. When looking at the touch-a-shrimp tank, people often say interesting things. Such as:

"Ooh! Baby lobsters!"
"They bugs?"

and my personal favorite:

"What these be? Crickets?"

People also look at the touch-a-lobster tank and say:

"They bugs?"
"I ain't touchin' no crabs!" (I heard that one a lot)
"Are these seahorses?"

Recently, we replaced the lobsters in the touch-a-lobster exhibit with small sharks. Unfortunately, the management had not taken the "Lobster" sign down yet. A woman looked at the shark and said, "That must be a lobster out of its shell."

And the most impressive of all, at the touch-a-jellyfish exhibit (mind you, people are looking squarely at jellyfish), someone asked:

"What kind of sharks are these?"

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The aquarium features a movie theater where people can watch entertaining and/or educational movies. Both the "front desk," entrance to, and the theater itself are inside the aquarium.

A man walks up to the employee at the theater desk.
Man: Excuse me, where's the aquarium?
Employee: You're in the aquarium.
Man: Yeah, but where's the aquarium?
Employee: All around you. You are inside it. Right now.

********************

Kid: Mommy, I wanna see the hippos!
Mom: Psssshhht. They don't have hippos!
Me: Yes we do.
Mom: What? Where would you have hippos?
Me: Over there. [points in general direction of hippo exhibit]
Mom: Oh. I've been lying to my kids all day.

********************

Person at the top of the main staircase: Excuse me, do these stairs go downstairs?

More to come.

playing catch-up, part 1.

Recounting all of the past events that have happened in the last year and a half. In no particular order. Part one. Here we go.

Me: Folks, you can touch any shark you like, along its back, with your first 2 fingers.
[40-something year old man proceeds to reach under the sleeping shark and lift it up, almost out of the water]
Me: Sir! 2 fingers. Please do not pick up the sharks.
Man: Oh. We can't pick them up?
Me: No.

This happens at least once a day. And I am only at the shark-touching exhibit for an hour or two per day. So let's think about how many times these sharks have been picked up.

********************

Some back-story: we have 2 female Hippos. There are also hundreds of African Ciclid fish in with the hippos.

[In the shark exhibit]
Father, slightly apart from his family: Excuse me, those back there, those are hip- hippopotamuses?
Me: Back over there? Yes, we have 2 female Hippos.
Father: Those are the big fish in there?
Me: Big fish?
Father: Yes, the big fish in there.
Me: You mean all the colorful African Ciclid fish?
Father: No, those big grey things. The big fish- those are the Hippos?
Me: Well, those are hippos. But they're not fish.
Father: They aren't? But they can stay underwater like that?
Me: Yep. They hold their breath.
Father: Honey! They're not fish!

********************

Kid: Oooh! Look! Starfish!
Me: Where?
Kid: Right there!
Me: That's not a starfish.
Kid: [confused] Yes it is.
Me: Is it shaped like a star?
Kid: Yes....
Me: Is it a fish?
Kid: Uh...
Me: Nope. So "starfish" doesn't make any sense. So we don't call them that anymore. We call them sea stars. That's the real name.
Kid: Oh. Hey, mom! Come look at the starfish!

This also happens multiple times per day.

More to come.

A brief introduction.

Hello. First and foremost, I am not quite sure what I can legally say on this blog. Consequently, I am going to leave out the proper names of people and places. That being said, I am Matt (is that really my name? Who knows?) and I work at a certain aquarium just outside of Philadelphia. At my job, I deal with the public all day long. My coworkers and I facilitate touch exhibits, bring out and talk about animals, and perform educational shows both as ourselves and as characters. While performing these tasks, we talk to people, interact with people, yell at people, and get to watch folks do stuff while they think we're not looking. This blog will serve as a record of all of the crazy stuff my coworkers and I witness. And we've witnessed some crazy stuff. Let me assure you that all of these stories/occurrences are real. And they haven't all happened to just me. I am going to take it upon myself to collect stories from my coworkers and record them here. So the people in the posts will be labeled as "employee" and "guest" mostly.

I've been working at the aquarium for a while now, and I've amassed quite a few stories. So right off the bat, I'm going to be posting a lot of them, to sort of catch up. After that I'll be posting new stories as they happen. Some may be brief descriptions, some may be a dialogue, but let me assure you that they all really happened and that they are all funny.

And let me say this: a lot of these are funny. But a lot of them also make me really sad. These vignettes both make my day and assure me that people, as a whole, are idiots.