Nemo's Shocking Demise

[I’m reliving some highlights of last week’s vacation (sigh) for the next few blogs.]

While in Nashville to see the Grand Ole Opry, my wife and I visited the Opry Mills mall next door to find a place for dinner. Picked the Aquarium. They advertise “eat under the sea.” Sounded like fun.

Of course, what they do is paint the restaurant interior to resemble the ocean and plant a huge saltwater aquarium in the middle of it. It was still cool. They had a large variety of fish swimming about, including sharks and rays.

Our waiter invited questions and said he would do his best to answer. “If I don’t know the answer, I’ll make something up,” he said.

Found out that there were three varieties of shark inside the tank: a large nurse shark that Wendy claimed laid on a rock and stared at her, five grim-faced black-tipped sharks that swam with a purpose, and a reef shark that hung out near the bottom. Lots of other fish too, big ones swimming in schools.

So I asked the obvious question. “Do the fish ever eat each other?”

It happens occasionally, I was told. “A couple weeks ago, one of the big yellow fish there apparently bumped one of the sharks, or said something bad about his mama. Next thing, this shark tore into the fish.”

Before you could say “feeding frenzy”, all five sharks attacked the doomed fish, leaving nothing but its head within five minutes. Now all of this was witnessed by the lunchtime crowd which, being a Saturday, included a lot of impressionable youngsters. Kids whose idea of what goes on under the sea comes from Disney cartoons. They were very distraught, the waiter said.

So the restaurant staff had to delicately answer some questions from the horrified children which included, “Was it Nemo?” and “Are you going to get another one?” Never mind that there were plenty of other healthy fish merrily (well maybe not merrily now) swimming about.

I can imagine the conversation some mothers had trying to get their charges to finish their fish sticks after that.

“No, I’m not going to eat Nemo like those sharks did.”

“OK, you don’t have to eat Nemo. Just finish your hush puppies.”

“Hush puppies??!!! Nooooooooooooooo!!!!”