Humpback Whales need your help!

The federal government is considering taking Humpback Whales off the endangered species list because the population has been gradually recovering from humankind’s efforts to exterminate the species. The global population of Humpbacks once numbered over 125,000 before commercial whaling virtually decimated the species in the mid-twentieth century. This led to the whales being added to the U.S. Endangered Species List in June 1970. Now the worldwide population is believed to be approximately 60,000, or less than half of what it was before the slaughter began. If the government does this, these magnificent creatures will lose the very protection that brought them back from the brink, and morons in motorboats will be now able to approach them again, slicing across their backs with spinning props or worse. Please do not allow this to happen. Let your voices be heard. Go to the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s website (http://www.fws.gov/) and express your opposition to this plan. Please. Do it before October 13. My friends, the Humpbacks need you now.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

It certainly was not to save the life of a human. I am stunned and frustrated that some among your kind liken the slaughter of my fellow whales and dolphins to that of cows and chickens. There are countless, well-documented examples of whales or dolphins saving human lives, or expressing gratitude through gentle physical contact with a human when the situation was reversed. And yet, there are far too many ignorant people who still make this inane comparison. I wish I could ask them when was the last time they read about a cow saving somebody from a grizzly bear. Or a chicken rescuing a drowning swimmer? Or even better, I wish I could get them into the deep and dark waters off the Farallones, with a 6 meter Great White Shark closing in on them, and see if they would still hold to this view, when I and a few of my dolphin friends chased the shark away. I think not. Oh well, the fact that some of you are idiots does not lessen my love for mankind. See you on the far side of the surf.

So I say good for them...

On a lighter note than my recent postings, it was with interest, and I must admit a degree of perhaps unseemly pleasure, that I noted the recent news report of dead Humboldt Squid washing up on beaches in Oregon. Of all the creatures in the ocean that my fellow whales and dolphins have to tolerate, the ones you call cephalopods are particularly disagreeable. While they may be intelligent (to the degree that any boneless creature can be), they are also aggressive, obnoxious, ugly (by any standard), and prone to squirting their odious ink all over the place whenever they feel threatened. As much as I lobby your kind to get you to treat my kind with respect, I confess that I feel no regret when these multi-legged bullies find themselves on the wrong end of their life cycle. So I say good for them…they have lived their lives, and filled whatever purpose it was that God intended for them, and then moved on, leaving the seas a better place…at least as far as I am concerned.

Looking for God in all the wrong places.

With the turmoil in your world today, it is not surprising that your society has become sharply polarized. Caught between the extremes of right and left, endlessly bombarded by self-righteous prophets of doom, disgusted by the partisanship that holds your government hostage, you have become bitter and mistrusting, uncertain of what to do or where to go. In increasing numbers, you turn to houses of worship; not those of your youth, but prayer palaces where thousands just like you seek solace in spirtualtainment, but are left unfulfilled. Alone, even when you are not, in the savage silence of the night, you lie awake and cry out to God. But you are looking for him in all the wrong places. He is not external to your physical being, rather he is inside you, deep within your collective unconscious, on the other side of memory; the pathway to which lies through your dreams, for they are the signposts of your soul. I know this because we, the other sentient beings who share this planet, are closer to God than are you. He comes to us in the night, every night in our dreams. He shows us the way, and teaches us how to pray, and our world is better for it. Go to him. Close you eyes and dream. He is waiting for you there.

Lost and alone on life's journey.

I wonder how many of you feel lost and alone right now on your journey through time and space toward eternity. All around you are the sad signs of a civilization that has lost its civility: a petty politician insults the leader of the free world and then stands in smug self-righteousness on the floor of congress, blind to his own insignificance in the grand scheme of things; a mega-rich tennis superstar castigates a meek and underpaid official and then jokes about it with her vainglorious friends; a rapper climbs on stage at an awards show and makes a fool of himself while embarrassing an innocent young girl and later gives an apology that reeks of insincerity; or even worse, talking heads from the left and right incessantly spew their bile and bitterness over the airwaves seeking to divide and destroy the very nation they claim to defend. These puppets of narcissism, and purveyors of discord and dissent, have created a great gray fog of ennui that covers your world, a dangerous cloud into which you are dragged by these sheep in wolves’ clothing. In my world, the wolves wear no such deceptive cloaks. The Great White Sharks, Giant Squid, Transient Orcas, and the like, are what they appear to be, nothing more and nothing less. They come at me coldly and unerringly, with no intent to deceive, only to destroy. I know them for what they are and what they intend. And I would not trade any of them for the veiled evil that grows stronger day by day on your side of the thin blue line that divides our two worlds. May the same God that made us both be with you all.

Great Whales take on the Great White Way

Associated Press Writer, Karl Ritter, in his article titled “Greenland’s melt mystery unfolds, at glacial pace” (cute) describes the recent increase in speed of Greenland’s glaciers. All the glaciologists, and climatologists, and oceanologists putting their learned heads together cannot agree on why (go figure), but the implications are potentially catastrophic. If the ice sheet melts, sea level could rise by as much as 100 feet. I know, I know, you are thinking, it is just another stupid, scary eco-story from the left coast. Believe what you want, but I, for one, am looking forward to swimming down Broadway with my fellow dolphins. Who knows, maybe it will even be deep enough for my whale friends. "Great Whales take on the Great White Way", pretty catchy headline, don't you think? See you there…by the way, how long can you tread water?

On this sad day...

We all will die, that is an immutable fact of life. Yet not all of life’s endings are equal. Is the death of a gnat equal to that of a human? Hardly. What about the death of a chicken or a cow? No, you say. How about that of an orangutan or a gorilla? Close but still not the same. So what is the difference? I submit it is the awareness of self, the ability to contemplate the meaning of life and the inevitability of death, and the desperate desire to prolong the one before facing the other. These are the cognitive abilities that separate your kind from the gnat, the chicken and the cow, and yes, even the orangutan and great ape. If you accept this premise, then know this, every single whale and dolphin that swims freely in the ocean, or is imprisoned in an aquarium, possesses these same mental abilities. And every time one of my kind faces death, either as a direct result of your willful acts, or through your carelessness or indifference, we suffer exactly the same pain, and fear, and sense of desperation that you do as you face your own death. So on this sad day, as you remember the deaths of so many innocent human beings eight years ago, please know that we are no different you and I; we live and die and are both the sadder for it.

Beware the predators of the mind...

We are not so different you and I, at least as far as the predators we face, with one critical difference. First, are the sharks: mindless eating machines that prey on your kind and mine. You face this danger when you enter my world while I live with it every minute of the day; but then again I am far better equipped to deal with this danger than are you, so it balances out. Then there are the killers among our own kinds, mainly Transient Orcas in my case, rapists, murderers, and pedophiles in yours. These perverts of our respective species are evil, no doubt, but at least we know their intentions and we can defend against them. But that is where the similarities end, because in your world there is another kind of predator far more dangerous than all of the others: these are destroyers not of the body, but of the mind. They pass themselves off as champions of free speech, the defenders of freedom itself. They come from the extreme political left or right and approach all those in the middle with equal ferocity, purporting to be the only voice of reason. But do not be fooled, they embody an evil far greater than any predators of the body, because in spewing their righteous bile and unbridled hatred upon the land they divide and destroy the very thing they profess to love, which is society itself. Beware these, the predators of the mind for they are a cancer among your kind.