I know exactly how he feels, I’m almost asleep at the keyboard as I type this – it’s been a very long day and I suspect I will sleep like a log when I eventually do make it up the stairs. We’ve made our annual trip to Legoland, near Windsor, for their Halloween themed firework night – I’ve lost count the number of years we’ve been. The event is usually well attended, to the point where they can reach capacity for the site hours before the fireworks are due to go off. Rather than risk being turned away, we make a day of it arriving just after the park gates open at 10am and leaving, in this case, ten hours later.
On such days, the cameras stay at home, well my dSLRs stay do, I always have my camera phone with me but whilst there are flowers and birds around that’s not what the day is about though we did spot mushrooms as we walked around the park. That wasn’t the limit of my nature encounter today, in fact, today’s brush with wildlife was certainly a bizarre one. One of the theme parks newest attractions, Atlantis, is a ride with a difference; instead of being hurled at great speeds up and down a rollercoaster, you enter a mock submarine which has glass sides which allows you to view the inhabitants of various marine tanks including black tip reef sharks, nurse sharks, various rays as well as a plethora of small reef fish. That wasn’t the unexpected encounter, however, after disembarking from the ride we made our way out past numerous aquariums full of clown fish, blue tangs, lion and trigger fish stopping by some waist height pools where a number of people had their hands in the water. The tank contained two inch long cleaner shrimp (that’s without their antennae) who, providing the person whose hand was in the water stayed still, would then swim over and start it’s cleaning duties, removing dirt and dead skin from the hand in question. So don’t be surprised if, next time you’re down the local shopping mall, you see some out of work fish, their jobs having been taken by shrimp!
Andrew Skelton: 
Leave a Reply