And now for the very best kind of “exploding” whale…

From BBC News:

After 15 months of pregnancy, Qila the Vancouver Aquarium’s 12-year-old beluga whale has given birth to her first calf.

The birth was captured live by television cameras.

Qila was the first beluga whale to be conceived and born in a Canadian aquarium.

She has remained in the aquarium with her mother Aurora, who is 21 years old.

BBC news also has a great video of the birth.

Next, Jon Murray of The Province has a nice gallery of photos:

Finally, the Vancouver Aquarium has posted an official announcement of the birth as well as their own video on YouTube:

And if you just can’t get enough of this baby beluga, tune into the Vancouver Aquarium’s “belugacam” — not to be missed!

In a long-lost piece written from the perspective of happy homemaker Patricia Halsworthy, the venerable satirists at The Onion let loose on the “have fun or else” mentality of the modern family vacation in…

• “I Refuse To Let Some Beached Whale Ruin Our Family Outing”

The story is relayed as Patricia’s side of a conversation between her and her family following their arrival at a popular beach destination. Husband, Eric, and kids, Joshua and Kylie, are less than thrilled when they realize that the otherwise gorgeous, pristine beach has been fouled by a huge, reeking dead (or possibly still dying?) whale. Patricia is determined to see that their guidebook getaway will carry on as planned. In fact, the whale is almost an afterthought in her nonstop ramblings about sunscreen, badminton, and “when I was your age” adages:

Kids, I’m already worried about this sun. There’s not a cloud in the sky, and they say the sun is at its most damaging in the late morning. We should move into the shade. Here, let’s sit in front of the whale’s belly. It casts a nice big shadow.

Later on, the carcass appears to be moving, and they think it might still be alive:

Oh, look! The whale is still alive after all! Its side is heaving! My goodness, it is huge…. And look how it’s weakly flapping its free fin. Don’t worry, kids, it can’t hurt you. It won’t be alive much longer, anyhow. Oh, now I’ve done it, haven’t I? Remember the dead starfish you found on the beach last year? Well, this is no different.

Kylie, stop crying.

After changing the topic to food, downplaying the malodor to her kids, and then threatening to give away the family pet, Patricia continues:

Okay, okay, everybody just calm down. Joshua! Get back here! It was only the whale’s tummy exploding a little. As the whale perishes, its body fills with gas, and then it needs somewhere to escape. It’s just like when you drink a little too much soda. That’s why we only brought juice on this trip. Look, this sort of thing happens during decomposition. Remember — death is just the final stage of life. Sober heads, now.

Come on, Kylie, Joshua, Eric, let’s all go for a swim. Let’s wash all this black, inky sludge off our bodies. Bring your boogie boards!

The work apparently dates back to June, 2004, but it was recently featured in a Philadelphia stage production called RAW ONION: America Speaks Out! in which actors portrayed several characters from the Opinion page of The Onion. The show was a fundraiser for The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, a Philadelphia-based theater company.

CNN’s News To Me program, which covered the Exploding Whale back in February, is now having a contest to determine which segments will appear in their self-proclaimed “blockbuster special” on May 17.

Obviously, I’d like to encourage you to vote for the Exploding Whale! So go do it. Now. What are you waiting for? I’ll still be here when you come back. Go on now. Vote for the Whale!

A: When you use explosives to get rid of a dead one!

Last week’s story of how the U.S. military shot down a satellite carrying toxic rocket fuel brought at least a couple comparisons to Oregon’s Exploding Whale. The military had lost control of the crippled satellite in late 2006 shortly after it was launched. The bus-sized hulk was finally threatening to fall out of orbit, and people’s lives were at stake should the fuel tank, or any amount of the one thousand pounds of unused hydrazine rocket fuel it contains, return to Earth. In order to minimize the amount of material that might be left in space, the government waited until just before the satellite was ready to fall out of orbit before conducting its operation. The goal was to blast the satellite into as many small pieces as possible, and to have those smaller pieces burn up as they entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? At least they weren’t expecting sea birds to eat up all the small pieces!

Anyway, Bob Welch made a passing comment about it on his blog. And then there was a nice little piece by Marlene Lang in Chicago’s Southtown Star. Here’s an excerpt of a few key passages:

[Most] of the satellite debris burned up as it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere…. Other debris will reportedly re-enter the atmosphere during the next 40 days…. It’s not likely to rain down on us like splatters of whale flesh. In fact, it’s unlikely to hit anyone at all…. [The] planet is covered with a lot of water, and people don’t live on the oceans’ surface. I just hope the debris doesn’t hit any whales.

You can read both articles at the following links:

• Close to Home’s Best of the Week: Feb. 17-23, 2008 - Bob Welch’s “Close to Home” blog
• Rocket fuel story a whale of a tale - Southtown Star

Much to my surprise, one of the Exploding Whale limericks I submitted to Bob Welch’s Oregon limerick contest was chosen as the winner from the 286 submissions! This clearly says more about the unending appeal of the Exploding Whale story than it does about my ability to rhyme, but I am honored nonetheless. As detailed in a previous post, four other would-be poets were sufficiently inspired by the Exploding Whale to make similar submissions — again testimony to the enduring nature of the story!

So, for the record, here is my winning limerick:

Florence is home to a tale surreal
In which a dead whale stunk a great deal
Boom! went the dynamite
One chunk took quite a flight
And crushed Walter’s new Oldsmobile.

Of course, “Walter” is Walter Umenhofer, whose brand new Oldsmobile 88 was crushed by a huge piece of flying whale meat following the explosion. Walter is mentioned in several of the newspaper articles covering the incident (e.g., 1, 2, 3, and 4) and was profiled by Bob Welch in a recent column.

You can read Bob’s original columns regarding the contest here:

• There once was a state known as … - Register-Guard
• Limerick loot goes to whale of Oregon tale - Register-Guard

And here’s a link to our permanent archive of the column announcing the contest results:

• “Limerick loot goes to whale” (2/21/08) - TheExplodingWhale.com

Update 2/22/08: Bob posted an entry on his blog with the winning limerick and a brief mention of TheExplodingWhale.com, stating:

Hackstadt, of course, has more than a passing interest in the infamous exploding whale story and in Walter Umenhofer, the Eugene man whose car was crushed by the blubber. Hackstadt is the self-appointed curator of everything “exploding whale.” If you doubt me, see his Website at www.theexplodingwhale.com.

Here’s a link to the the entry on Bob’s blog:

• Close to Home’s Best of the Week: Feb. 17-23, 2008 - Bob Welch’s “Close to Home” blog

Well, it certainly didn’t take long for the Exploding Whale to make an appearance on Register-Guard columnist Bob Welch’s blog! I mean, seriously, what do you think he expected when, in honor of Oregon’s 149th birthday (which was on Valentine’s Day, February 14), Welch asked his readers to submit limericks honoring the state’s places and geographic features?

Well, I for one felt obligated to submit something related to the Exploding Whale. And apparently, I was not alone. In addition to my three entries, four other readers were moved to poetry by our beloved cetacean detonation. Please, feel free to read through all 286 submissions. Or, at the end of this entry, you can read just the limericks that referenced the Exploding Whale.

From the 286 submissions, Bob will pick the top three and award them gift certificates to a local book store. In addition, the best limericks will be published in his February 21st column. (Update: See this posting for the surprising results!)
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