Behind the Digital LensMusings of an Amateur Photographer

19th Oct, 2011 I love you THIS much!

I love stingrays!  Especially their underside.  To me they look like happy angels.

The State Fair of Texas at Fair Park has a revamped children’s aquarium that has a “hands on” exhibit with horseshoe crab, rock lobsters and other non-venomous water creatures that can be touched.  Then, in an outside, but covered area are the sharks and stingrays, the latter which can be hand fed and touched.  After the tragedy that involved Steve Irwin several years ago, I have been a bit leery about touching a stingray, but these were harmless because they did not have their stingers.  Little characters, they would jockey for the right to get touched and to take shrimp out of your hand.  Pushing and shoving, along with squabbling, the largest wasn’t always the winner in the “battle”, but the “conflict reminded me a lot of a rugby scrum in chaos.

And then there was the “ham”.  The one stingray that had to show off at the window.  One of the larger stingrays in the tank, “he” wanted to be noticed [I don’t know if it was a he or she, but for ease of speech I am using the male pronoun] and made no bones about it, bobbing up and down and back and forth, swimming in a circle around the tank, and then coming back to bob up and down at the window again.  It was like he was begging to have his photo taken.  So, I did.  And I got him in a position that said to me, “I am happy to see you, and I love you THIS much.”.  It was a great experience, and left me feeling upbeat.

I love you THIS much!