An Evening With Papa

Dave’s dad is a biology professor at Lebanon Valley College (wow, look at that!  Thanks to Privacy, I can use real names of places now!) Last week he called us during dinner and asked if the kids were available for a visit to the college.   Unfortunately, Ben was heading to baseball practice and Maddie was heading to swimming practice. Lucky Jack, however, had no plans, so after supper he and I headed on over.

It turns out some special ocean creatures Papa ordered for his students to investigate had arrived!  Bug Boy was delighted to have a sneak preview!

Papa had at least 20 tanks full of sea creatures!  We saw sea stars (left)  and brittle stars (on the right).

The creatures above are sea worms.  When they moved they wriggled back and forth like snakes!  They totally freaked me out.  But Jack bravely held one.  He is totally crazy.  Seriously nuts. Definitely takes after his father who once during his childhood found a dead ground hog, brought it home to his dad (Papa)…they cleaned it up and reassembled the bones onto a board. 

(One time I brought home a harmonica and my dad figured out how to play it.  That was pretty cool too.  Sigh.)

Papa showed him a tank of shrimp and Jack immediately asked if he could hold one.  Papa said that was fine, but warned him they would be very fast and hard to pick up.  Below are his first and second attempts (notice the shrimp in the purple circle flipping out of his hand in mid-air both times):

He finally got one, but my picture is too blurry to show you.

He was allowed to hold everything except the sea anemones.  He handled or inspected sea cucumbers, fiddler crabs, horseshoe crabs, sand dollars, hermit crabs, sand fleas (mole crabs), sea urchins…

and this funny long thing that looks like a…

Hmmm.  I don’t know what it looks like…maybe a slug with leprosy?  Papa told us its name, but I can’t remember it (and no, it’s not a sea cucumber).  I even tried googling it for you but couldn’t find it.   I can tell you that it’s related to the sea star because, like the sea star’s 5 arms, it has 5 rows of those icky orange things.  The interesting thing about the picture above is that creature looks like it’s peeing right at the camera!  Can you see the stream of water shooting out of the top one?  I don’t think it’s pee.  Papa told us, but Jack and I were laughing so hard that I didn’t catch what he said (sorry, Papa).  **UPDATE**My father-in-law read this post and tells me the photo above is indeed a sea cucumber!  I think my hearing was affected by all the crazy peeing going on.

Jack got to look at a few smaller creatures under the microscope.

And then it was time to hit the road.  I hope Papa’s students have as much fun with those sea creatures as Jack did (I’m thinking they did not).  Thanks, Papa, for a great visit!