My American Angel (Shower & Shelter Artist Collective Book 6) by Brooke St. James

Author:Brooke St. James [St. James, Brooke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-05-14T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 12

I stayed at Theo's place until 2am, and even then, I had to force myself to leave. We talked a lot, but for part of the time, we just sat there next to each other and watched television. It was far and away the most comfortable first date I could have ever imagined. In fact, it didn't feel like a first date at all. It felt as though Theo and I had known each other our whole lives.

We met up again the next day at noon.

Theo came over to my house, and I took him to the Coastal Center to feed the stingrays. Theo had seen a stingray up close, and had even touched one, but he had never fed one before. I had been doing it for years, and always thought it was such a cool experience, so I made time for it even though my brother had plans to drag Theo fishing all afternoon and would probably wear him out.

There was a tour guide at the nature center who explained the process of feeding the stingrays to a whole group of us. It was something that happened twice a day. She gave us a whole speech, and then each of us got a little plastic tray that had some combination of baitfish or shrimp tails. My little tray had four fish and a shrimp and Theo's had all fish. I grabbed the fish-heavy containers on purpose since the fish were longer and easier to handle.

Theo and I got to the edge of the tank with our containers. The stingrays were so hungry that they swam right up to the edge, vying for a spot near the humans who they knew now had food. The tour guide had instructed us to lay our hand palm-up and completely flat on the bottom of the ledge. She told us to position the fish between our fingers pointing upward so that the stingray could swim by and take it.

Their mouths were in the center of the bottom of their body, so they had to swim up to your hand and position themselves properly in order to take the food. This resulted in half of their soft, slippery body skimming against your arm, which was a funny sensation. The next thing that happened was their mouth finding the piece of fish that was in your hand and proceeding to suck it up like a vacuum cleaner.

Instead of sharp teeth, a stingray had two bony plates in its mouth that would come together the way two rolling pins would. In other words, stingrays chewed their food by crushing it between two blunt objects. This was why it was a good idea to keep your hand flat and the stingray's food perpendicular to it. The lady explained all that, and she went around, making sure everyone was doing okay but mostly helping the kids. Theo and I both took to it like pros, and we both went back for an extra tray since there were some leftovers.

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