Whale Tales

I suppose most of us here in California and the West Coast have heard about the two Humpback whales who have been "stuck" in the Sacramento River and who have only just decided to make their way back out to sea. Apparently, we tried to lure them out with sounds of other whales feeding but it didn't work. But then they decided to go ahead and go by themselves.

I have just one question for these whale experts. How in the hell do you figure that these whales got lost? I mean, seriously. Whales of all types have been going up the Sacramento River for years. YEARS. All types. All sizes. Mostly Humpbacks in recent years, true, but why do you figure that they're getting lost when they do that?

How do we not know that these whales have like some giant bet going on between them, that it's all just a ploy to frazzle us and see how much we do to encourage them to go back out to sea.

"Hey, Martha. Psssst! Martha! Take the kid on a stroll up the river this year and get the humans all riled up. Then when you get back to tell us all about it, we can have a huge laugh! It'll be a riot! Then next year we'll get one of the other species to do it because it's their turn already. Man I love doing this!"

We've already proven that dolphins are highly intelligent. And I firmly believe that any animal that has the ability to carry on for over an hour singing a song that is so complex yet perfectly repeated from whale to whale is just as intelligent. They're not freaking lost. They're exploring. They know precisely where they're at.

So quit saying they're lost already. Just because we humans have no real places to explore anymore doesn't mean that other species on earth can't do their own explorations. Let's admit the truth. We just don't want them in "our" territory. They need to be "protected" from us so they have to be out in "their" ocean, not in "our" estuaries.

The only way that's going to happen is if you put up a fence. To keep the rest of the world out of our backyard. How sad.