I just don't get the great fascination with whales

I know we've all wondered at some point in our lives - perhaps while going numb as we pump petrol into our car - whether whales have lips.

It is a very good question, and the answer is . . . I have no idea.

Yet we really should know.

We obviously like whales. And when I say "we", I mean everyone except the Japanese and me.

To prove my point, I was watching tv news the other day, where the big story was the crisis on Wall Street, an event that will have a direct impact on all our lives.

Just before this story, there was an item on the good folk of Papamoa Beach near Tauranga, who'd spent all day refloating a whale.

This orca had washed itself up on their beach, they'd spent hours keeping it wet and pushing it back into the sea, and then clapped and cheered as it flicked its tail and swam off.

Some tears may even have been shed.

Now I am not so without feeling that I can't see the fluffiness of this story. I do wonder, though, about people who say we shouldn't interfere with nature but who then rush off to the seaside to push six tonnes of blubber back into the sea from which it has, of its own free will, just emerged.

Maybe the orca had sclerosis of the liver. Maybe it was a promiscuous whale with a sexually transmitted disease and had just been kicked out of its pod. To back up my theory, this particular whale had done this before. He was clearly on a mission.

You'd think, then, people would leave him be, but oh no. I imagine him being one very confused mammal as he swam off in search of a quieter beach on which to kill himself.

I struggle with all the fuss over whales. I don't think they are particularly pretty or even graceful. I mean, meerkats are cute, monkeys are clever, cheetahs are classy and albatross are graceful, but whales are ... blobs.

Even in the water they are blobs. I've done the Kaikoura Whale Watch trip, because I'm a loving husband. It took us so long to find a whale I'd used up all the sick bags.

When a whale finally surfaced it did so in a manner that insinuated it had been dead for a month and had just become decomposed enough to float.

But then its eye moved. Or at least I think it did. He might have been smiling too, but his lips, if he had any, were below the waterline.

After a minute he was finished being bloated and disappeared, but not before sticking his tail in the air so that everyone could go "ohhhhhhh" together, probably in wonderment that they'd just forked out $140 each for that.

But maybe that's just me.

I do have two delightful stories to tell you about whales, the first of which I can't verify because I don't remember where I heard it, and the second which I can because I've watched it on YouTube, and YouTube is as accurate as you can get.

The first involves a New Zealander in Japan who, like all the other townsfolk, heard one day that a whale was trying to beach itself. As is the human wont in such cases, he decided to interfere with a natural process, and trotted off to the relevant beach.

When he arrived it took him a minute to register what was happening - the locals were pushing the whale UP the beach, where they proceeded to hack bits off it, and take them home to the freezer.

Oh dear.

The other story comes from Florence, Lane County, Oregon, the United States of America. A whale beached itself there and died, and the locals were pondering how to dispose of it in the nicest possible manner.

So they decided to blow it up.

With dynamite.

With 20 cases of dynamite.

The theory was that they would blow this whale into such little bits that seagulls and the like would be able to do the rest.

Yes, I know, from here on in it's compulsory viewing.

So, with cameras rolling, the people of Lane County, under the sheriff's direction, take themselves a quarter mile up the beach and push the detonator.

The beach explodes. I mean, the WHOLE beach explodes.

Then, for maybe 10 seconds, there is silence.

Then blubber starts raining down. Great chunks of it . . . thump . . . thump. The footage becomes quite jerky at this point as the cameraman, and everyone else, run for their lives.

The next time the camera is steady we're in a nearby carpark, where a piece of whale has crushed a car.

This, of course, is not in the least bit funny, so you will not be interested to know it can be viewed by going to www.youtube.com and typing in "Exploding whale".

In fact, if you did go off and watch it, there would be something wrong with you, wouldn't there?

 

- © Fairfax NZ News