The Ballad of Teddy and Miss Baha

Today involved a series of mishaps beginning with the killer: forgetting to charge the battery on the camera, so I had to buy a cheap throwaway one, which is why the pics don’t look that good. The second mishap, was not mine, but worked to my advantage. The concierge at my hotel told me that Sea Life Park opened at 9:00 am, which was awesome, because I’d been awake since 7:00 am, unable to sleep.

Of course, when I get to Sea Life Park, which is an hour bus ride from my place, I am informed by the matronly admission person that I am an hour early, the park doesn’t open until 10:00, only special tours are allowed in before 9:00. Sigh, so I go sit on a bench that’s made to look like you’re sitting on a sea turtle’s back. Ms. Matronly looks at me thoughtfully, and then beckons me over. “You look like my daughter-in-law,” she says, “you go on in sweetie, just tell them you’re with the Sheraton tour, if anyone asks.”

Awesome, this means the park is empty except for a few guided tours. I feel like a celebrity with unobstructed access to all the exhibits, no having to push small, nose-picking children out of the way. The penguins are mine alone to enjoy. They float on their backs and flap their little flippers at me because they’re excited to see someone. The sea turtles are inquisitive. The seal lions…are fat and sleeping. They haven’t roused their enormous, shiny blubbering bulks yet. Fatties.

I make my way up and down the paths until I come to an arena; I glance at it, just a big tank. I walk by, but then something catches my eyes, are those…rogue penguins? At the top of the tank are these three penguins, not in the water, but on the platform. And now that I’m squinting, I see the gray graceful figure of a dolphin in the water. Now I am intrigued. Solo dolphin in an empty arena and potential escapee penguins? I’m in. So I move in for a closer look.

I inch closer to the tank (I inch not because I'm trying to be all covert, but because I’ve already slipped and nearly killed myself because my flipflops have no traction and the floor is wet and slimy). And like a little kid, I kinda press my hands, and possibly, my nose against it. I think the dolphin is smiling at me.

“His name is Teddy,” says a voice behind me. I turn around, a little embarrassed and try to cover up my greasy paw prints on the glass. There’s a grinning guy wearing a pastel blue STAFF shirt. I want to get the attention of my greasy smears on the glass. “What’s with the penguins?”

The guy grins and launches into this convoluted story about how those cute little tuxedos are kind of like the opening act for Teddy and are sadly, not on the lam. “Would you like to meet them? And the big guy?” He asks, gesturing to Teddy. Do I want to meet the dolphin? Oh, hell yah! He adds, “I mean, it’s not supposed to, but no one’s here yet, as long as you don’t tell anyone or take any pictures.” Right, who am I gonna tell, besides my whole blog and its 6 followers (yeah, thanks guys).

I'm going to call this guy, “Kemo,” (which is actually the name of a guy I work with, but I want to protect this guy’s identity, that and I probably couldn’t spell his actual Hawaiian name, and he kinda looks like a Kemo, so we’re going with it). Kemo takes me on a VIP tour behind the scenes; imagine traffic cones and buckets with silvery fish and weird looking dolphin toys, clipboards, cleaning schedules, all very glam.

This is all very fine and good, but then I get to touch penguins. Sadly, this is not as exciting as it sounds. Penguins don’t actually like to be touched, so it requires me to feed them oily little fish and even then they shy away when you want to touch them. Fine, whatever. Aloof penguins.

Teddy on the other hand comes right over and lets me touch him, shake his fins, rub his belly. Kemo then proceeds to tell me all about the inter-tank dolphin drama. Turns out that Teddy is currently pining for Miss Baha. Miss Baha is currently in the connected tank behind us with Kona. Teddy and Kona are separated because they don’t have a great working relationship. Not like gouge each other in the gills to the death bad, but Teddy has a thing for Miss Baha, Kona’s girl. “Kona,” Kemo says, “is kinda like the Big Kahuna. Do you know mainlanders know that word?” I pretend I don’t and kinda sound it out for his gratification “Kaaaa-hhhhuuuuu-naaa,” I say aloud. “Very good,” he nods and I wonder if he’s gonna feed me an oily little fish as a reward. But, he’s very nice and he’s letting me play with the dolphins, so I’m not about to foul this all up by being snarky.

As I’m playing with Teddy, who makes all sorts of fun noises, Kemo further explains the aquatic love triangle between Teddy, Miss Baha and Kona. Kona is Sea Life Park’s prize performer because he’s not only super smart, but incredibly agile and easy to teach tricks. He’s also locally grown, farm raised or something, like coffee. And Teddy, well Teddy is the underachieving runt who isn’t living up to his potential. I don’t know. It’s hard to listen when you’re playing with a dolphin.

Miss Baha, on the other hand, is apparently the hottest little piece of tuna around. Kemo opens up the gate to the back holding tank and in comes Miss Baha. No, Teddy does not rush over and mack on her. Teddy is a gentleman.

Miss Baha is smaller than Teddy, even though Teddy is the runt (for males, Kemo explains when I ask). Kemo tells me Miss Baha is very pretty. Now, I don’t know much about the attractiveness of dolphins. I wouldn’t know which one to hit on in a dolphin bar. But she’s very smiley and she’s a lighter gray with a stark white tummy. And she makes a lot of high pitch happy noises and clicks. And she likes me too because she comes over, lets me pet her, and hangs out. Awesome! So we like Miss Baha. But unfortunately, Miss Baha is all gaga over Kona, alpha male dolphin and isn’t giving Teddy the time of day. Poor Teddy.

She and Teddy start circling around in the tank as Kemo starts throwing toys in the water: nerf balls, a squishy basketball, and some other floaty type objects. Teddy brings the basketball over to Miss Baha. What a guy!

Kemo apologizes, but it’s time for him to do the sound check. He rolls his eyes and says something about the music selection. He excuses himself into the booth and then the theme from Ferris Bueller's Day Off comes blaring from the speakers all around the arena. You know what I’m talking about, the one where they see the car? Okay, it’s in the Twix commercial too? (Ohhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhh, chicka chicka). The dolphins are grooving on this music, you can tell. This is their introduction music for some sort of trick they’ll perform later on. It's getting them pumped.

Teddy comes back over, and lets me rub his belly again. “Teddy thinks you’re cute,” Kemo says. “Teddy thinks you’re really cute.” Then I realize that we are not actually talking about Teddy. Unless my breath smells like anchovies (it doesn’t, just the Chunky I had for breakfast, thank you), Teddy is not really the slightest bit interested in me. His heart belongs to Miss Baha, remember?

Anxious to be nice about this, I mumble something about how I’m like Miss Baha, I have a big Kahuna at home (I mean, Aaron is kinda a big Kahuna. Who else brings portable carbombs to New Years, two years in a row? Who else has the audacity to eat food off the T (Besides Becca). And have you seen this kid’s sideburns? Or the way he takes a case apart? Yeah, definitely a big Kahuna). Of course, this sounded more clever in my head and now Kemo is trying to be polite and so am I, but we’re both embarrassed. Playtime with the dolphin is over. I thank him for the tour and promise to come for the show later on (I don’t, what show is possibly gonna top getting to be all up close and personal with dolphins?) But it was nice while it lasted.

On the way out, I stop by the glass tank and snap a few pics of Teddy and Miss Baha. Teddy tries to bring me the basketball. It’s very endearing. And Miss Baha comes over to where I’m standing to. I feel very special like that kid in the Sea World commercial where Shamu comes over to the glass. The top pic is of the tank and behind it you can see where the holding tank was, click on the pic to enlarge it, then look above the Sea Life Park sign and you can see the penguins. Miss Baha is in the next two, happy smiley Miss Baha the heartbreaker, and then last, is Teddy. Go ahead and try and tell me that Teddy does not make you smile. Uh huh, that's what I thought.

At Sea Life Park, they charge you over a 100 dollars to put on a stupid lifejacket and stand in a pool with ten other people to pet a dolphin. For 200, you get to ride one (no joke, check the website, it's called the "Royal Swim"). But somehow I got to play with Teddy and Miss Baha for free. I kinda felt like the cool kid today. Baller!