Fishy

Our older girls love the dolphin show at the MN Zoo. LOVE it. It is absolutely one of their most cherished activities. I suspect their current love of Ariel is directly related to their first love of dolphins. Since so many families seem to share this common experience, you could imagine my surprise when we entered Discovery Bay one August afternoon to find no line for the dolphin show. Usually, there are hundreds of abandoned baby buggies at the foot of the winding stairway that leads up to auditorium. I knew something was amiss as soon as I spied the empty stroller coral. Sadly, we were informed that one of the dolphins is pregnant and the dolphin show has been put on indefinite hiatus. It could even be on hold until this particular marine mammal births her baby. Not sad for the dolphins mind you; but for me, who had to explain to our girls why we weren’t going to see the dolphins that day…and maybe for a long time after. Surprisingly, they accepted the pregnant dolphin story hook, line and sinker. Even today, when something dolphin comes up, it’s highly likely one, or both of them, will say: “the dolphin show is having a baby”, followed by a sigh, but then a quick return to whatever they had been engaged in before dolphins had come up.

Fast forward to last week when I run across an odd little news item from the Pioneer Press regarding the dolphin show. Apparently, the zoo staff had significantly streamlined their story. Yes, one of the female dolphins, Allie, is pregnant and expecting next spring. However, April, Allie’s mother, who is not pregnant, is behaving as if she was. She’s also not eating. Zoo biologists can’t figure out why. To make matters worse, all this pregnancy and fake pregnancy is apparently making Semo, Allie’s babydaddy, really, really, horny. He’s chasing that mother-daughter tail as fast as he can and neither the mother or daughter are making it hard for him. Quite to the contrary.

The presence of a female and a male is all it takes with dolphins,” said Kevin Willis, director of biological programs at the Apple Valley zoo. “Dolphins are a species that are pretty easy to breed. They’re big, and they do it often. They’re not shy or secretive. Parents found themselves even having to explain the dolphin trio’s behaviors to their kids, Willis said. The dolphins were so sexually distracted that trainers had to cancel their shows.

What you talkin ‘bout Willis! It’s like a Jerry Springer cast you got swimming around up in there. Willis says: “all four will now be managed as breeding dolphins to get ready for next year's calf birth." Spree, Semo’s 7 y/o dtr. has so far kept her relationships platonic. "Until now, they'd been managed as show animals. So we just decided, with one confirmed pregnancy and one we're not sure about, let's just take away any stress, take away the show element of the day…Not an easy decision, but we decided we would just let those animals have a break." Except, from the sounds of it, those animals aren't resting much. Holla!