Murderous Mews

image borrowed from bing

Murderous Mews

“You have the freedom to be yourself, Jonathan, your

true self, here & now, & nothing can stand in your way.”

--Richard Bach.

Once more, Nature 

has been molested by man, forced

to be an unwilling participant in a new

unbalanced oceanic rape scenario.

The Southern Right Whales, reduced

from a population of 50,000 a hundred

years ago, to a modern day population

of 7,000 world-wide--have always

migrated to the warm Patagonian waters

near Argentina, to the Valdes Peninsula,

swarming in large birthing pods near

the bustling city of Puerto Madryn.

Each year 200,000 tourists spend 40 million

dollars, flocking there in July-December

to watch the majestic mammals breach

the water. leaping magnificently into the air,

& then displaying their regal tails;

but these days hundreds of tourist ships

stay tethered to their docks, because

the magical whale watching has become

a horror movie, something out of the 

fevered mind of Alfred Hitchcock.

The Kelp Gull population has exploded

during the past few years, since Chubat

province Argentineans have erected

huge open air garbage dumps, & they

continue a policy of tossing fish parts

from local seafood packing plants

directly into the ocean.

Always ravenous, these carnivore gulls

have discovered that they could score

easy meals by attacking the whales;

diving down onto them when they surface

for air, driving their sharp beaks & claws

first into the rubbery flesh, & then tearing

off five foot strips of sweet blubber.

Adult whales suffer hundreds of deep lesions,

but seldom die of the terrible wounds; they

have learned to arch their backs underwater,

only surfacing their blowholes before diving again;

so the real victims are the whale calves, from

2-6 weeks old, with their softer skin, & a tendency

to linger in the warmer shallow waters where

they are fed 25 gallons of floating mother’s milk

daily; being lipless, they cannot suckle.

It is said that the macabre torment of the whales

is a nightmarish dirge, sounding like a punishment

from vengeful gods of the deep. 80% of these

Southern Right Whales suffer from gull-inflicted

wounds, but it is the vulnerable calves that are

dying at an alarming rate.

Argentinean politicians are not suggesting

going green, processing their garbage properly,

or disposing of fish parts more efficiently,

no--

rather they are sending out police patrol boats

with orders to shoot the gulls doing the attacking,

& then dispose of their bodies quickly so that

marine life do not feast on them & ingest

the ammunition as well, further upsetting

the ecological imbalance.

Like the nearly forgotten plight of the drowning

polar bears, this is just another manifestation

of man’s hubris, ignorance, & arrogance;

one day soon the whales will just stop coming,

and maybe the killer gulls will start attacking

people out of their frustration

and madness. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN126
Posted over on the Mag 197

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