Walruses from Brooklyn

Today I met up with two friends, the art teacher at my school and my friend Julia Torrant from high school, and we went to the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn. I had never been before, but saw their baby walrus advertised at the Bronx Zoo and wanted to see him. The subway takes quite a while from Manhattan to Brooklyn but it was fun to sit and chat with Lloyd on the way. When you get off at the aquarium stop, it's a cool change of scenery after the city- the beautiful view of the shore opens up and you can see the old Coney Island roller coaster and ferris wheel. The aquarium was on the smaller side but they had a few cool attractions; of course the walrus and his mother, an absolutely gigantic ray, and a very neat octopus. The baby walrus was 115 pounds when he was born! He apparently gains 2-3 pounds a day...I'm assuming at some point this weight gain stops, but they said his father weighed 3,000 pounds. The mother was pretty huge too. They were sunning themselves on a rock the whole time we were there, at one point blowing gigantic raspberries on each other...it was quite amusing. After we had our fill of aquatic life we found a Starbucks and had some tea and a nice talk, and Julia sent me on my way with a belated wedding gift which turned out to be a set of cute porcelain pasta bowls she brought all the way from Paris. (Her parents bought her a graduation gift of a European trip this past summer). How thoughtful of her- we will enjoy using them very much!