Essays in Idleness

A Gray Whale has been spotted from an aeroplane, off the Boston States. The flight was taking a census, to illustrate the whale decline in the North Atlantic, “owing to global warming” — which is the cause of everything on the weather channel. Cetologists were surprised.

Gray Whales of the North Pacific, last of the family Eschrichtiidae, are fifty feet long and forty tonnes heavy and can live for eighty years, we learn from the Wicked Paedia. But there was no entry for the Atlantic version, because no one had seen one since the XVIIth century (when the whalers called them the “Devil Fishes”). Given their size, and tendency to persist, and reputation for showmanship, how did they hide for such a long time?

The scientists must speculate. They think a Gray must have slipped through the Northwest Passage, “owing to global warming.” But he would have encountered fewer obstacles if he swam directly from the planet Neptune.

One of my idle hobbies is noting new species that are discovered around the world; often in quite public places. Some, for instance, appear right off Nantucket. If we do a census, we find that more new animals are discovered, than old ones are reported extinct. And those extirpated then show up, after the good-byes. Should we attribute this to global warming?