What looks dead is sometimes wildly alive

While I was visiting Alaska earlier this month, I visited the wonderful Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.  It was a fascinating place, and we loved watching the seals and sea lions (and learning the difference), the seabirds, and the displays about the importance of fishing in the Bering Sea.

What really caught my attention, though, was a glass bowl next to the “touch me” tank — a bowl with a small colony of barnacles.  I’ve always thought of barnacles as sharp, hard nuisances on pilings and rocks — but a moment with a magnifying glass changed all that. 

The barnacles were wildly alive — opening and closing, and sending out delicate tendrils to sieve food out of the water around them.  They were not brightly colored, but the soft colors blended subtly into one another.   Their movements were not exactly coordinated (they are individual organisms, I think), but I felt as though they had some sort of pattern to their mutual dance.

I wonder how often I have looked at something and dismissed it as hard, sharp, and dead — and missed something beautiful and wildly alive?