Two animals I saw in a Nature Center

Here's a Spiny Softshell Turtle from the Quarry Hill Nature Center: Absolutely the most phallic and the most fishlike turtle I've seen in my life. I love that snorkel nose. Here's a catfish. I measured it with my Nevada Native Plant Society plant ruler. You could, if you wanted, color-correct my photo of the catfish to match the swatches on my ruler. The catfish is alive. It's just floating around in a tank of water so clear, behind glass so unscratched and clean, that it looks kind of like it is dead and on display in a giant brick of resin, or something. The tank it was in was fucking incredible - it had passages underneath it for kids to wriggle through, so they could see the fish from below. It was in a room full of plastic sculptures of fish and plants and rocks and logs. There were a truly preposterous number of animal enclosures here, and tons of reptiles and amphibians. There was a fake cave and a wall covered in stuff about prehistoric single-celled organism fossils. I walked…