Landry's Restaurants, Inc. is proud to announce the arrival of a new, two-year-old Sumatran tiger to Denver's Downtown Aquarium. His name is Heran, and he joins three other rare sub-mountainous cats with funny names: Marah, Besar, and Jalan.
Now, it's not at all odd that we bestow upon our favorite predators names better suited to a gnome from Dungeons and Dragons. Neither is it all that surprising in this world of hyper-horizontal integration that a restaurant company owns an aquarium-we can live with that. In a way, it even makes sense: "Yes, waiter, I'll take the grouper: the one swimming over there by the Greek ruins."
But when you think cats-especially big, jungle-dwelling, man-eating tigers-you don't normally think stingray touch tanks as well. It's like that "Sesame Street" skit where your assignment is to identify the one thing amongst four that just doesn't belong: coral lagoons, sunken temples, 500 aquatic species-and a tiger?
I suppose it's no weirder than the "desert" exhibit listed on the Downtown Aquarium's Website. (Or did they mean desserts? This is an aquarium built around a restaurant model, after all.)
Regardless, if you need your tiger fix and don't trust the Denver Zoo to bring it to you, then perhaps to the Aquarium it is. Come to think of it, the Denver Zoo doesn't even have a tiger-let alone three with Barbarian-like names.
But they do have some cool fish.
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