Whales

Whales were my cousin's favorite animal so they couldn't be mine. Then I moved away, so she wouldn't know they were my favorite. When we first moved to Gig Harbor there were rumors of an Orca pod hanging out in the south Sound area. Every time we drove across the Narrows Bridge I would look down thinking just maybe I'd see a dorsal fin or a tail. 

In 2014, Amy and I went to New Zealand to visit our friends and see a new place. We went whale watching off Kaikoura. Sperm Whales. Only the males though, because the water was too cold for the females and the kiddos. We saw great gray bodies come up to breathe and then, just as they were diving to feed again, they'd give us a glamor shot: a perfect fluke. 

For the rest of the trip, all of us sang old contemporary Christian songs replacing God and Jesus with whale. A few years back, they sent us a cross-stich of a fluke diving in choppy water with "Whale of Ages" sewn over the top. "Whale of Ages. Whale is the Rock. There is no Whale, there is no Whale like ours." 

Last year, Amy and I went up to Grover Beach for a getaway. There were humpbacks off the shore by the dozens. It was a banquet. There must have been quite the spread. They breached and slapped and moved playfully through the water. I couldn't take my eyes off the ocean stage. 

I'm not sure if it's all of them, but in Alaska humpbacks are known to feed in a collaborative way called Bubblenetting. These are the Ocean's Eleven of humpbacks. A nice coincidence. The whales box in an area and then basically become Scylla and Charybdis, frothing the water, shocking their dinner into stasis so they can take turns swimming through the feast. 

There's a UPS hub down the street from us, and in the evenings when I'm riding home from work (when I was allowed to work anywhere other than home) the hulking brown trucks would roll in and out of the warehouse like humpbacks bubblenetting. I would always get home and tell Amy "The whales are out." She'd know what I meant. 

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