A really frickin' long description of the Baltimore Aquarium.

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Went to the Baltimore Aquarium last Friday. The lobby has a walkway over a pool of sting rays. The water's clear enough that the sting rays, with wings slowly fanning the water, or rippling like the flanges of hovercraft, look like they're flying above the pool bottom.

At the very top of the museum is the rainforest exhibit encased in a glass greenhouse, which also serves as the aquarium's roof. It was close to the aquarium's closing time, and the rainforest was damp and dark. Everything was asleep, except for large toads that sat in dark areas of the footpath, waiting to be stepped on. I saw a sleeping scarlet ibis, which I'd only known about from the story, with head tucked into wing, one leg delicately lifted and the other spindly leg balanced on a cable like some sort of tightrope walking ballerina. It graciously woke up for me, its head swiveling on its long neck. The sloth hanging against an unfortunately shadowed section of mesh, was merely a dark, furry silhouette.

Went to the dolphin show too and sat in the splash zone (aka front row seats), but I was off by the side so I didn't get splashed. In the middle of an arena is a giant tank. You walk up to what appears to be basically a wall of glass that's taller than you are, and you think, "Oh, a seven foot deep tank," which is pretty impressive in itself. However, if you stand next to it and look down, you see the dizzying drop-off where the straight walls of the tank extend, far below your feet. (It's 25 feet deep, actually).

For the show, lights come on inside the pool, they turn the lights off around the stadium, and all of the water glows. The glass is so thick that the distortion is intense. If a dolphin is under water, the dark figure you see at the surface of the water and the figure you see through the glass are in such drastically different locations that sometimes you'd confuse them for two dolphins. If a dolphin or trainer is partway in the water, the part that is above and the part that is below the water seem spliced like twenty feet away from each other. That's how thick the glass is. It's an impressive feat in itself.

Dolphins are strange animals. Because of all that's said about the bond between humans and dolphins, I think I'd subconsciously expected them to look more anthropomorphic, to smile or wink or something. Of course, instead, they looked just like other animals, with expressions that are completely inscrutable. In simpler terms, they aren't really as cute as they're hyped up to be. However, the power in their muscles and their bursts of energy are simply amazing. Maybe you don't think about this except when you see dolphins up close, but dolphins are big, and their sleek musculature is a sight to see.

The show itself was fantastic, but I don't think I as a spectator could describe it to you in a way so that you'd get a better impression than by say, just watching a tape. It is different from watching it on tv though. Take my word for it. They did some stuff, like stand on their tails and propel themselves backwards, splash the audience, beach themselves on shallows and wave, play catch with balls in their mouths, jump into the air to hit a ball with their noses, and swim around dragging a trainer behind at the speed of a small (and completely silent!) motor boat. Stuff you see on tv. But, because it's in real life, better.

If you take a set of stairs under the stadium, you can see through a great glass window at the bottom of the tank. If you look up, you see the underside of the surface of the water, twenty five feet above your head. This is like the height of a two and a half storey building, if such a thing were to exist, or a sizeable city wall. It's intimidating. The glass is thick here too, and curved to bulge outward. At certain points because of the distortion, the dolphins will appear to swim out of the tank. Up close against the glass, you notice their imprefections. Scars here, splotches there, signs of age and experience. Maybe it's just me looking too much into things.

Outside the dolphin arena is a section of the aquarium with all sorts of interactive activities. I stood in a little booth where a computerized voice measured my height. I'm five foot four and a quarter inches, the exact length of a harbor dolphin. I'm so proud.

In another section of the aquarium, there's a racetrack shaped tank, filled with coral and tropical fish, and in the middle of it is a walkway that spirals downward along the inward wall. Because of its shape, all the fish swim in one direction in laps, as if there were some invisible traffic cop. All the fish are pretty cool, like some square-headed fish that look as if they were beaten out of aluminum foil, and an unpuffed puffer fish the size of a watermelon. As you descend the spiral walk, the lapping fish follow you. At night, near closing time when most people have left and the lights are dimmed out of consideration for the sleeping fish, this tank is a bit creepy in its loneliness.

The spiral track descends under the coral tank, the wall around the walk is covered with black silhouettes of different species of sharks, rimmed by purple light. Any babies being carried by their parents begin crying at this point. Under the wall of cutouts, we reach the racetrack shaped shark tank. Unlike the coral tank, it's not filled with color but monochromes. The sharks drift slowly around in laps (traffic cop again), like floating starships of science fiction. In the silence and serenity that fills the expanse, several people sit on the floor, studying. There are ugly sharks and beautiful sharks, sharks sorely in need of braces with teeth jutting out of their mouths every which way, sharks plopped down upon the sand, sharks with skin shimmering iridescent under the intermitant shafts of light, to disappear into the unlit sections of the pool on regular intervals. There's a door in the side of the shark pool, big enough for a human. I wonder why it's there.

Under the shark tank, if you descend further, you reach a window that peeks into the bottom of the sting ray tank, and if you exit that, you're back in the lobby again.