Recently, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for their annual Otter Days event. Along with all the usual fantastic exhibits that the aquarium has, they also had a new baby otter that was certainly going to be the star of Otter Days. Everyone one knows that I am mostly a heartless jackass, but even I cannot resist the gravitational pull of the center of the Cutie-verse that is a baby otter. And, being that the event was called Otter Days, I was under the impression that there would be so many of those cute little bastards all over that the aquarium employees would have to spend most of their day piling up extra otters in the corners just to clear a path for the visitors to get through the exhibit.
This was not the case. As far as I could tell, there were just two female otters floating in the back corner of their tank picking bugs off each other most of the day. They would occasionally do a somersault in the water, but definitely the most entertaining thing they did was when both of the otters climbed on shore and started 69ing each other. I'm assuming they were actually still just picking bugs off each other, but the position they chose to do it was super hot!
Also, there was NO BABY OTTER anywhere to be seen. Goddamnit. That is some bullshit!
By the way, if you go to next year's Otter Days and are reading the aquarium's schedule of the day's activities and there is an event called Otter Dress-Up or something similar, DO NOT BE FOOLED. Unlike what one would expect, it does not in any way involve dressing up otters in costumes! Personally, I was hoping for an Abraham Lincoln otter. You can't tell me that wouldn't be stupefyingly awesome and if you tried I would never ever believe you.
Instead, it is some sort of embarrassing crowd participation abomination in which goddamn kids are dressed up like otters! That is in no way awesome. In truth, I don't even know if that actually happened because we left promptly as soon as a the MC asked for a child volunteer from the audience that liked to dress-up. Maybe they were going to have the child try to wrestle the costume on to the otter and we totally missed out, but I doubt it.
That would have put the event back into the awesome category for sure because that otter is still a wild animal an probably would've torn that kid's head off if it meant not having to wear a fucking Harry Potter costume.
I do not want this post to sound like I am complaining about the aquarium itself. The staff seemed very knowledgeable and was incredibly patient with the crowds of morons. A special kind of appreciation goes out to the young lady that had to endure being the MC at the Otter Dress-Up fiasco because she kind of managed to sound half-way believably excited while performing even though doing that ridiculous show everyday must absolutely destroy her soul.
The exhibits, other than the otter-less Otter Days, were excellent even though there were nine million goddamn kids running around screaming everywhere. A quick note for parents, if the aquarium is kind enough to let visitors handle some of it's wildlife, please do not let your retarded monkey-child bang the starfish repeatedly against the edge of the display. How would you like it if I came into your house and started slamming your kids into the fucking wall?
Well, if your kids are the type of useless brat that beats up defenseless sea creatures, you should thank me.
The highlight of my visit was getting to see the giant octopus. As you might already know, I love tentacles.
It must have been my lucky day because when we got to the octopus tank, he was moving all around the tank. His tentacles were swirling around in the water as he repeatedly slid across the viewing glass of the tank. It was amazing. It was like he was putting on a show for me. He would swim for a bit, then climb some rocks and then slide across the glass again ten inches from my face. I was hypnotized and stood there in awe for quite some time.
Obviously, other people were just as impressed and thought they should take some photos to record this amazing performance for posterity. The problem was that there were signs everywhere informing us that flash photography was NOT allowed. An octopus is used to living in darkness and the bright camera flashes are unpleasant for him.
And of course, these assholes did it anyway because they're assholes.
After all who would care about an animal's comfort when some all-important tourists have their precious pictures to take? It's not like there's a giant gift shop full of professionally shot photos of these amazing creatures that you could purchase for your memories. And there's probably no photos at all of this giant octopus on the Internet that you could possibly view to help you remember this fine specimen. Or you could just actually REMEMBER it!
Instead you've decided to torture this poor animal with bright flashes in a dark room so you can have your own personal, poorly composed, barely in focus, washed out memory that looks NOTHING like the natural beauty before you.
The octopus would use it's natural camouflage defenses to turn from orange to white when a flash went off because it was AFRAID. Then everybody would say "ooooooh!" and start snapping more pictures because it was so incredible looking. Fucking selfish pieces of shit.
I really hate people and I have a feeling that the giant octopus does as well. Luckily for me, when I get annoyed I can just leave. When he gets annoyed there's nothing he can do about it. If only the glass on his tank wasn't so thick...
