Strange Creatures

Today I saw two of the strangest creatures I have ever seen, both sea animals. One was a black spiny thing, just large enough to fit in my hand. The dense part of its body was a little smaller than a golf ball and the spines were between two and three inches long, at different lengths. There was an opening among the spines on top through which produded a sort of antenae with an orange eye on the end. It could retract this at will.

No joke.

The other thing was very obviously a fish, the sort of dingy yellow that you find on gum erasers. It was shaped somewhat like an anvil, with a square bottom. It could have sat very nicely on a desk as a paperweight, but it had a bit of trouble negotiating the water. It just wasn't at all streamlined. Poor thing had to beat its tiny little fins like mad to negotiate the water at all, and he constantly appeared on the verge of flipping upside-down.

“I think Darwin missed this one,” I said.

Mark and I were at the last exhibit of the natural history museum. Other live things we saw today included a room full of the biggest (live) chickens I have ever seen in my life. The roosters were about five times the size of any rooster I had ever seen before, and they were perfectly round. There were tickets on each cage that appeared to be judges' results, so I suppose the chickens—a rooster and a hen in each cage—had been contestents in a 4H-type event.

They were very nice-looking chickens. But the roosters were in competition with each other to see who could make the most noise. The room also housed some of the largest rabbits I have ever seen. Freakishly large. Larger than a large watermelon. Huge, carnivore, man-eating bunnies.

Ok, I made up most of that last part. But that fact does not negate the fact that they were monsters.