For the second time in eight days, I went to the Georgia Aquarium today. I had two different groups of out of town visitors, and itself the most high-profile tourist attraction in Atlanta. So I drove almost two hours into the city, faced the crowds of shuffling goons and their greasy, unvaccinated children, and saw a bunch of fish and mammals.

I saw dolphins put on a show. They leapt from the water, jumping over ropes and hitting red balls hanging from the ceiling with their nose (which is not really a nose, it just looks like a nose to us— dolphins don’t have a nose, they breathe through their blowhole…also they are warm-blooded, since they are mammals; they’re whales, actually). Their trainers hold onto their dorsal fin and get pulled around the tank. The trainers also stand on their (not actually a) nose and ride the mammals like a surf board. Oooh. They use their tails to splash the first ten rows of the audience. Aaahh. Part of the show is when they take some dumbass kid from the audience and let him interact with and touch the dolphins, and also throw some fish in its mouth when it did the things they wanted it to. It seemed very happy to get the fish.

I saw the giant tank with the whale sharks in it. One of the employees did a presentation about how what a pain in the ass it was to get whale sharks to middle Georgia, so we appreciate all the effort that they put into bringing these amazing, massive creatures to this place where they don’t belong. UPS helped, which makes sense. We all sit and gawk, taking pictures and videos with our phones while the whale sharks and rays swim in circles forever on the other side of two feet of clear acrylic.

The tropical exhibit, with its brightly lit tanks full of perfectly clear water and technicolor fish, is the best place for selfies. I saw the clown fish, hiding in pulsating orange anemone. Little kids screamed and slapped at the glass, screaming for Nemo. Everyone ignored the posted signs asking them not to use flashes to take pictures of the jellyfish.

The aquarium does lots of research and rehabilitation and conservation activities. According to their videos, they’re always working to try to help mitigate the damage that the rest of us do to the natural world.

I have been to the aquarium twice in the last eight days, and four times in total. You would think I’m bored with it at this point. And I am. However, when the sea turtle (whose name is Tank, bt-dubs) shows himself and lazily paddles across the huge viewing window, I still gawk and fumble for my phone. I still lose track of time staring at the Beluga whales coasting gracefully and blowing little air bubbles that they seem to play with. I still call my friends over excitedly when the sea otter rubs his face in the ice, grabbing some in his little hands and chomping on it, because it’s adorable. I still get excited when I get to see them feed the whale shark, marveling at how they vacuum up everything in front of them. I still use a picture of the jellyfish for my phone’s lock screen (though I did not use the flash), or a picture of a clown fish for my wallpaper. I still almost buy a stuffed seal pup or something from the gift shop.

It was dark when I drove home from Atlanta. I hate driving at night, partly because I suffer from night blindness, but also because— as my guests pointed out to me eight days ago when I had to drive back home from aquarium at night (and which I had never actually noticed before) —deer can be seen grazing, right next to the road, as though they’re killing time, waiting for a ride. It’s terrifying. They’re just calmly chewing away, cars speeding by right by them. Seeing them, I understood why deer are hit by cars so often. I gripped the steering wheel tightly, my right foot hovering over the brake. I imagined how I would probably freeze if I saw a deer in my headlights.

To be honest, I was kind of mad at them. Like, you fucking dummies. What is wrong with your dumb asses? Do you not see the reckless parade of cars flashing past you? The speed limit is 70mph, and no one is going less than 80mph. We’re going as fast as we can, and we’re not interested in your lives. We’re not paying attention to nothing. We’re out here trying to run into whatever we see, hit it hard and make it explode and turn it from a solid into a mist. We aren’t paying attention and we like to make stuff into other stuff that it wasn’t before just to keep from getting bored for a couple minutes and we’ll make you dead just like that and not give a fuck. We’ll mostly be upset because of how much it will cost to make our car look perfect again. We won’t even bother to tell ourselves stories about why we killed you. We’ll get UPS to bring a giant whale shark to Atlanta, GA just to do it, just because we can, and we’ll tell ourselves it’s because we’re good people. And you’re not no whale shark. We’ll just clean the pieces of you from our car’s grill and wipe the blood from our headlights and forget you, because there’s always more things to not pay attention to. Listen up, and get as far away from us as you can. Pay attention and do what I want you to do. I’m trying to help you, stupid animals.