A stroll through the Cal Academy

If you haven't hit the new Cal Academy building on Howard Street, take an afternoon to visit. Although there's not quite the space as the old building, they still have some great exhibits and it's well worth the time.

At the moment, the ANTS! exhibit is up, and you can literally spend hours observing those little critters. We found ourselves tracking a particularly intrepid leaf cutter ant as he trekked from the branches of a tree all the way along to 20 foot path laid for him up to the nests.

If you make it past the ants (sadly the army ants have been decimated by an infestation of predatory beetles -- The Trials of Life) there's tons of fun in the aquarium, not the least of which is the Biggest darned sea bass I've ever seen. "But is it ill-tempered?"

He's accompanied by a crowd of moray eels, that I imagine would have the whiny weasally little voice of a Disney cartoon, "Hey, Boss? Boss? Boss, yeah, that's the ticket, Boss, you can take 'em, yeah, go ahead..."

"Aw shaddup," Murray the Sea Bass would belt out.