A Whole New World

It's getting hot. Next week, we should hit the 100s for the first time this year; it's a couple of weeks later than last year, I should mention. As hot and yucky as it was last summer, it was a mild one, in terms of Austin weather. Even this year, our newish across-the-street neighbor has her windows open almost every day, but she's from Florida, which is even worse than Houston, which is apparently a lot worse than here. So I guess we should count our blessings on our sweaty little fingers.

We've been saving quite a bit of money staying home the past few months, but today we took our car in for $350 worth of stuff to have done, only to realize that our brakes are almost shot and whoever installed the rear tires stripped two of the bolts that hold the hub on, so they can't just sell us new tires... we need one new hub. So now we're looking at $1500 worth of stuff. That needs to be done, so we're sucking it up. But still. Saving money was fun while it lasted. (Losing more than that in our 401k wasn't fun, but that's not a "felt" loss the way that forking over money from the checking or savings accounts is. [That was a grammatically correct sentence, even though it sounds awkward.])

Yesterday, Mal mentioned that he wanted to go see the birds at the aquarium, because he was remembering one of them saying "Hello" to us and was convinced that the bird could full-on talk.

We looked it up today, and the Austin Aquarium just so happened to have reopened on Monday. I bought a Groupon (saved $11!) and we headed over, planning at first just to see how many people were there before making a decision about today.

Turns out there were only 2 other groups there; a largish family of maybe 6-8 folks, and a two-parent/one-kid family. We were never in the same room with another person the whole time we were at the aquarium. They've stopped the "interactive" things like feeding the lemurs and whatnot, but Mal doesn't like animals close-up in that way, anyway, so we've never tried that and didn't miss it. They also had the playground and the interactive floor game thing shut down, which we were expecting.

However.

Mal was freaked out the whole time and begged to leave on multiple occasions during our visit. We had a season pass last year, and while he never really enjoyed the tanks with the big old Texas river fish, he was pretty used to everything else. Today, he vacillated wildly between delight -- the birds! the new otters! the stingrays! -- and sheer terror -- the bearded dragon! the giant tortoise!

First, a few things have changed: The kangaroos are gone, and in their place are two other kinds of lemurs (the ones in the front are ring-tailed, and the new ones are black and white, and brown ruffed lemurs). They built a neat hollowed-out log slide and pond for the new otters, which cheeped at us but didn't feel like swimming when we were around.

There were a couple of added tanks of pretty colorful fish toward the end that I don't remember having been there before.

And they got a pair of toucans!

But back to Mal...

When we paid and walked into the first room, he saw the boat where the bearded dragon sits (and literally does nothing, because... lizard) and said, "I can't go in there!!" When I told him he could hold on to me and I'd stand between him and the display, he was equally chagrined because walking through on my other side would position him near the river fish. Fortunately, I was able to distract him with what I think is a pretty freaky eel, but which happens to look just like the eels from Super Mario Odyssey, so he was willing to look at the eel, and I subtly walked him around the displays he didn't want to see while he focused on that.

Mal did have fun in the stingray room, waving and saying "hi!" to the creatures who were used to having hordes of school children feeding them all day, and seemed energized by the company. But there was a fiberglass shark in this room, and Mal didn't want to walk over to see some coral because of it. He finally did, but I had to finesse that, too.

Posing. But also kind of freaked out by the pirate.

We went through the room with the koi and ducks, and Mal did pretty okay there until he noticed the giant tortoise. Granted, that thing weighs more than Malcolm does, but at least today he wasn't trying to climb the wall and escape like he was the last time we were there.

Mal did get to see the birds, and the one that usually says "hello" was not there. But one was very vocal, and would respond to us when we talked. Of course, it was LOUD. I explained to Mal that they have to be loud to communicate in a dense rainforest.

I also realized that I'd left the earphones in my car, and wasn't super pumped to remind him that those exist.

After he chatted with the birds for a few, he was ready to walk out... but then he saw the albino python. We've seen it MULTIPLE times, but this time, it was too much for him. He started yell crying and put his hand over his ears. I told him he could just walk quickly out of the room, and he said, "How about run?!"

He ran into the next and last room, then looked over to see a life-sized replica of a shark's jaw. He FREAKED OUT. It wad like in a horror movie when the protagonist just keeps running into things at every turn.

I had him look at the baby sharks before we left, because I never like for him to end an experience on a bad note. He said he was glad his younger cousin Chance likes "Baby Shark," and all seemed forgotten.

Until we got into the gift shop. He wanted to look around, then I pointed out to him a pretty big orangutan stuffy on the top shelf. He saw it, blanched, and announced, "We're getting out of here!"

So we did.

He's going to have to relearn how to interact with the world.