Whale Wars

 

WHALE WARS

by

Anthonystjoseph

     Normally my stories, although thought provoking and spiritual, always involve a heavy dose of humor combined with sharp wit and a deep sense of enlightenment.  Somebody stop ME!  This time the only thing that I pray to God that I can inspire and evoke is enlightenment.  I had just finished another grueling day of work which involved navigating a human idiot at work and trying to put his idiotic brain pattern out of my mind and catch a nap when I happened to choose the wrong channel to nap to.  The television channel in question is the Animal Planet and the show that they were showcasing was this reality show that I have managed to miss called Whale Wars, one of a few that I’ve missed for I love reality shows.   All of a sudden I was clutching my chest and tensing my body trying everything that I could to help these poor defenseless whales get away from these Japanese Whaling vessels that are hunting and killing these whales.  Then, right in front of me on my own television in my own damn house in my own damn bedroom while I was trying to nap they harpooned a whale with a cannon and a steel arrow the size of a small telephone pole that looked like it could have killed King Kong and served as the devil’s toothpick. 

     My nap was clearly over and I was glued to the channel as I wondered what I could do to stop this act of insanity.  I realized that I have never been more involved in anything that I have seen on television before as I watched the Japanese whaling vessel chase and kill the fourth whale of the day.  I watched hoping and praying as the intelligent whales, who had already watched three of their friends and family be slaughtered just minutes earlier, tried to outrun the harpoon on the front of the whaling boat.  The whales were swimming as fast as they could and they were trying their hardest.  The whales in their intelligence knew that if they stopped long enough to take a deep breath to dive that the killers on the boat would get them with the steel arrow that looked the size of a small car.  The harpoon that they used to catch and haul the whales had to be big and thick and sharp in order to penetrate and retrieve the whale when they struck it. The Japanese whalers just chased the whales at a steady pace, the whalers were running on fuel and the whales were running on fear and adrenaline.  Needless to say the whalers have more fuel than these poor defenseless whales have adrenaline.  The whale that was being chased, he was one of two whom happen to tire out first, finally slowed down and was only around thirty feet from the harpoon boat when the man shot him with the harpoon.  It was an explosive release of the harpoon that you could feel and an even deeper explosion in your heart than the loud explosion that you heard when the harpoon hit the whale and the water burst and blood poured and the whale SCREAMED!  My God!  And sometimes I think he is MY GOD and maybe not all of yours.  How can we as humans, I know I can’t, kill so easily.  

     These were Orca Whales, or as some call them Killer Whales that these so called Japanese ‘Research’ vessels were killing so let me tell you a little bit about these whales.  Quite some years ago I had a friend who was infatuated with whales and inspired me to read a great book on the subject of whales and I learned a great deal.  First off, a little known fact is that the Orca or Killer Whale is actually a dolphin.  It just happens to be so big that they call it a whale but in fact it is a dolphin.  The fetus of the Orca is very much like the fetus of a human.  They have arms, legs, toes, and a head.  One might alert oneself to the simple fact that their brain is larger than ours and their vocabulary is also larger than ours so you might have to face a judge and jury upstairs if you do find yourself killing or eating one of these sentient beings. 

     As I watched the Japanese Whaler raise his fist in triumph over harpooning the whale and witnessing the explosive sound of death that he caused I was overcome with disbelief.  I will disclose my own bout with killing at this point to help you to understand my disbelief at his lack of concern in taking life. 

     As a young boy in Phoenix, Arizona, I hoped and dreamed that my mother would someday give me that BB gun that I always wanted.  Even though I try not to identify with most of the testosterone related pitfalls that are set for us men, I was born one so I have succumbed to a few of the traps.  Finally, a male friend of my mother’s pulled out a BB gun at his house while my mother and I were visiting.  I think I started salivating on myself like a male dog in heat who has just been shown a horny poodle that only came up to his knees.  I was speechless as I stared at the power of the Gun while my mother’s friend explained that it was no ordinary BB gun.  This Gun happened to be a Benjamin Franklin 22-caliber pump action pellet gun.  I was holding this power in my hand and rubbing the real wood and simply lost in the weight of the seemingly real rifle.  The man said that if it was okay with my mother that he had no more use for the gun and if she said okay, ‘I could have it.’  Well it was either the attraction that my mother had for this gentleman or the steel, soul threatening bullets, if she said no, that were coming from my eyes that convinced her to say yes.  I was happier than a pig that lives in the back of a buffet restaurant that gets all of the leftovers from uneaten portions where they watch you too close to sneak out what you don’t eat.  It was heaven.

     Since my new Benjamin Franklin 22-caliber pellet gun was pump action, you know I had to spend all night in my pajamas pumping it, the rifle, to its maximum power for that first shot in the morning and I knew exactly what I was going to shoot, BIRDS!  I learned with my first shot what the United States Army would learn later.  I was an expert with a rifle.  The first bird I saw was a sparrow and let me tell you that two minutes after I saw him, he saw God!  I went on for weeks killing every bird I could catch standing still for a few seconds and some that were even in flight.  I remember to this day the hummingbird I shot in flight and how small he was when I walked up on him.  All I thought of was how good a shot I was for shooting something so small that was MOVING!  WHO’S BAD!  I WAS!  That was all soon to change.

     My mother and I at this stage in my childhood development lived in some condos on Thunderbird Trail right on the golf course near South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona.  The golf course provided little Tony with plenty of hunting grounds.  It was the first shot of the day and I think I had even forgone breakfast in order to get my first kill in.  I was walking on the golf course with my rifle slung over my shoulder like the true Tennessee backwoods hunter that I had descended from.  I had only got about fifty yards from my home when I spotted him.  There he was just as pretty as can be and waiting just for me to provide myself with a new merit badge for my crimson soaked collar.  It was a new merit badge of bragging because this was a RAVEN!  I had never killed one of those before.  I had taken out silly sparrows, passive doves, nasty pigeons, cranky crows, and even some tired quail, but never a RAVEN!

     I stopped in my tracks and slowed my movements as I watched the majestic raven with his regal posture stand proud atop the telephone pole and observe the land and smell the wind.  I took my rifle off my shoulder around a hundred feet from the very tall telephone pole that he was perched on.  The telephone poles were a lot taller than normal telephone poles in order to keep the telephone wires from interfering with the golfers shots.  I aimed my Benjamin Franklin Rifle right at the raven and let all the power of the first shot of the morning, with all the pumps through the night, loose.  I exhaled after the shot with a smile on my face and looked at the raven and nothing happened.  I was a little shocked.  I rarely missed.  I looked at my rifle wondering if it was working and it seemed to be fine and then I looked back at the raven as he continued to stand atop the pole majestically and then it happened. 

     As I looked back at the raven, all of a sudden, he just leaned over and fell the huge distance from the extremely tall ‘golf course’ telephone pole and hit the ground.  I swear to this day that there was a loud dull thump when he hit the ground, and my soul even remembers the ground thump were I was standing as well.  I looked around to see if anyone saw because something about this act of murder seemed different.  Although all life is precious this was no silly sparrow.  I slowly walked up to the raven and when I got up to it I experienced some of the deepest sense of regret and fear that I had ever felt up to that point in my life.  I looked down on a bird that was bigger than a small poodle.  I again looked around because I knew I was going to jail because this bird was so big that it clearly had a birth certificate and a driver’s license.  I was so scared that I turned and ran all the way home and never in my life wanted to shoot another bird again.  I even avoided stepping on ants after that little act.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  If I find a bug up in my house and they aren’t on the mortgage, they got to go, and by go I mean RAID.  Don’t make me break out Luke 10:19, ‘…behold, I give unto you the power to trample on serpents and scorpions…’ to me that means spiders and snakes!  I don’t like them.

     Seriously speaking, I could feel and tell that the raven I had shot was a creature that was most likely intelligent and clearly I had no right on God’s earth killing.  It didn’t take the later knowledge in life that ravens were monogamous and kept the same mate for their entire life to make me regret my actions, nor did it take the actions of the ravens that later in life followed me for four blocks to protect me from imminent danger to make me feel sadness over my actions.  It also didn’t take the ravens that seemed to watch over me on my journey from San Diego to Denver when I found out my grandmother passed during the trip.  It simply took the true emotions of a considerate and compassionate human being to walk up on that large creature and realize that I was in the wrong.  I had taken a beautiful creatures life that when I was up close to it was one of the most beautiful animals that I had ever seen.  I wrote a piece titled ‘Stoned’ which was an homage to one of the birds I shot that is also on my album ‘Passion Flowers’ and it goes like this ~

‘He said to me again and again

Just don’t you worry

You’ve been chosen to win

For all the cries of ‘you’re crazy I see’

You are more and more with We

For you have been chosen to help spread the word

As one would if a hummingbird

For when you were young and the one that you shot

With him and with you there was a lot

He is still with thee as he will always be

But for him and you to do there is a lot.’

~Anthonystjoseph

     So it was with great horror that I sat and watched as the harpooner raised his hand in a celebratory fist after killing one of God’s greatest creatures.  And if you don’t believe in God, let’s just say the whale is one of Earth’s greatest creatures.  To see the blood and hear the scream of these majestic creatures was more than my seriously in need of sleep self could take.  As I watched and realized that Japan’s love of whale meat and its belief that whale meat is an aphrodisiac is what feeds this insane act of humanity I came to an awakening.  I realized that my Toyota in my garage has paid for WHALEMEAT!  I realized that anything that I own which was built in Japan is paying to KILL WHALES!  When I turn in this Toyota for my next car I guarantee you it will NOT BE A JAPANESE MADE AUTO!  This is the official announcement of my personal boycott against all things Japanese until they stop this horrible act of murder on the high seas of beings that are most likely more intelligent than us free will having humans. 

     I’m going to get a hamburger.  And I don’t want to hear anything about cows.  Cows are dumb ~ You know they’re dumb because they only make ‘white milk’, if they were smart they would make chocolate and strawberry.  Then I would have their back and point out their intelligence.  It’s called comic relief.  Please join me in never purchasing anything Japanese again until they change this senseless act of murder on the high seas. 

By Anthonystjoseph

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