Creative Musing from the McWane Science Center

– High School Environmental Science

The high school recently took a trip to the McWane Science Center in downtown Birmingham. We had to answer questions about which exhibits displayed concepts we had been learning in environmental science, including matter and its phases as well as the water exhibits and environmental issues on the bottom floor. We also wrote poems related to the animals we saw. Here are some of our favorites from the day:

Ode to the Wonderpus Octopus

(Apologies for the photo quality; the wonderpus is shy and in an extremely low-light setting)

Oh, Wonderpus,

how I love the spots
that sit upon your head,
the stripes upon each arm.

I hold each heart in mine
with each iridophore
and chromatophore
that colors you so fine.

My wunderpus photogenicus,
with your salivary papilla
you surpass any mammalia;
the pinnacle octopus.

My little leviathan,
with blood as blue
as the warm waters around you,
I live for your hemocyanin.

I have fallen for your charm,
no Mollusca can serve in your stead,
all other octopoda are ersatz,
compared to my darling Wonderpus.
~Hannah

The Fish of Tin and Ink             

Like a sheet of grumpy aluminum foil,

This creature drifts slowly through the clear water

Looking no more alive than a drifting piece of plastic

Fins barely moving

It glides back and forth

Face the picture of contempt.

The black void darker than ink

Glares at observers from a shiny casing

But all the reflected soft pinks and golds

Cannot undo the horror of the pit.

Thin, silver lips,

As if in retreat from the darkness above,

Protrude from the bottom of the elongated face,

Locked in an unending frown.

Even further from the unnerving cavern

The forehead juts,

Looking like a fish trying to escape the grotesque body

It currently resides in.

So the painfully flat form drifts

Back and forth

Sickly grey scales trying to reflect any color the light provides,

As if some pleasant purples or cheery yellows

May cause a passerby to forget its true repulsiveness,

And so it will remain

Forever moving, the fish of tin and ink.

~Emmy

Moon Jellies Haiku

Moon jellies swimming

In the blue sea gracefully

Gelatinous blob

~Kathryn

Choosing Our Alabama Spirit Dinosaur

We were asked to choose which dinosaur that lived in Alabama would have been our spirit dinosaur.  Several people chose the smallest dinosaur or the most dangerous dinosaur.  Our favorite response? “In the picture below you can see how the dromaeosaur is giving an amazing lecture even while hunting a larger dinosaur…that’s my kind of dinosaur.”