There's an aquarium down on the waterfront - Seattle Aquarium no less. I go in and head straight for the sea otters. There's four in a tank, just floating there and enjoying the sun. One of the adults is holding hands with one of the juveniles and everyone is just melting when they notice. How many other furry animals hold hands like that?
There's also river otters, northern fur seals, harbour seals, octopus, various fish, anemones, shellfish etc. Its now feeding time for the fish in the big dome. Two divers are distributing fish food and the dome is full of excited children.
I head back to the sea otters for their feeding time. They've woken up a bit from earlier and are now swimming around and grooming. The two adult otters are clearly different sexes, and we get a close up view of the mating behaviour of the sea otter. Junior just rolls around in a corner.
Two aquarium staff turn up and throw scraps for the sea otters. One of them gets out and wobbles around a bit on land - it doesn't look very happy - and plops back in again. It then tries to chew the base of the pole belonging to a net that one of the staff has. Next to the tank is a staff member with a table of furs. The sea otter fur feels so much softer than anything else, and the value of its pelt is suddenly apparent.
After a while wandering around the aquarium, I find my way back to Dave's flat. When he gets home he says we're off to see a friend of his who is visiting Seattle for a while. We grab some Mexican take-out and then get hopelessly lost trying to find where Cindy is staying. After phoning her for directions we finally get there. It's a beautiful large house with a balcony overlooking Lake Washington where we sit and drink and eat. Cindy's daughter has some friends over and we hear them splashing around in the big hot tub. We chat until it gets dark and then go home.
| Previous Day | Next Day |
| Main Diary Page |