The Spitting Walrus & The Smart-Alecky Whale

 When I was three or four years old I horrified my mother when she discovered that both front pockets of my little blue jeans were stuffed full of earthworms. I was fascinated by animals then, and I remain fascinated by them today.

Over the years my animal companions have included four dogs, four cats, numerous goldfish, a couple of full aquarium set-ups – one with cichlids, and one with a tiger oscar – three mice, a rat, two black widow spiders, a garter snake, a fish tank full of crayfish, two ornate box turtles, an emperor scorpion, a horned toad, and a tank full of tadpoles, five of which fully metamorphosed into frogs and were released into a nearby pond.

I would have to say that I got along, by and large, with all of those animals. Yes, I’ve been griped at by a dog that wanted to go outside, and both of the box turtles peed on me, as did the garter snake, and who amongst us has not been audience to a cat as it aired its daily litany of grievances, but these were minor bumps in an otherwise smooth and companionable road. (Or as companionable as one’s relationship with a scorpion is likely to be.)

There have been occasions, however, when I have encountered animals who decided that I should be singled out, from among all the other humans in the vicinity, for a special dose of vitriol.

(Walrus, In Repose)

This first meeting of the species took place at Marineland of the Pacific, on California’s Palos Verdes Peninsula, in 1978, just a handful of years before that grungy hellhole closed for good. One of the pens was home to a couple of walruses. They floated around in their small pool like a pair of extra-large fishing bobbers with tusks.

I was standing there, elbows on the fake rock surrounding the tank, studying their whiskered faces, when one of the pair submerged, and then reappeared right beneath me. Smiling, I said something like “Aren’t you a handsome devil.” Now, I don’t think I sounded sarcastic, but the walrus became peeved nonetheless, and it gave vent to its displeasure by spewing a jet of stinky fish water that hit me right in the face. I’m talking maybe a quart of the stuff, and when I say “stinky” I don’t really mean “stinky,” what I mean is the water smelled like liquified irritable bowel syndrome. We actually had to leave the park shortly thereafter, so I could clean myself up. My mom rode the whole way back to our motel with her head sticking out the window.

(Walrus, Expectorating)

My parents and my little brother thought I smelled nasty, and I thought I smelled as bad as it was possible for anything to smell, but I was also totally jazzed. It was absolutely going to be the first thing I told my friends about what I did on summer vacation. You went to your grandma’s and had a barbecue? Well, I got spit on by a walrus! Bow before my awesomeness! What you want from me, I was 13…

Sticking with oceangoing mammals let’s jump forward to 1996 and a particularly salty beluga whale.

Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is a fairly decent attraction, as aquariums go, despite the fact that it has captive beluga whales and Pacific white–sided dolphins, a situation which hopefully won’t continue much longer. In March 1996 I was working as the stage manager for a children’s choir, and our touring schedule had landed us in Chicago on a non-performance day, so we schlepped the kids off to the aquarium, divided them into groups of five or six, and placed each group under the supervision of an adult.

They were a pretty well-behaved group of kids – smart and curious – and I enjoyed leading them around to the various exhibits, answering their questions if I could, and tossing out bits of applicable trivia.

When the beluga whales weren’t being forced to do tricks on command (which the Shedd bigwigs to this day keep trying to fob off as “educational” displays of “natural” behaviors) they generally swam around their tank looking listless. Me and my quintet of prepubescent boys, all dressed in their matching shirts, arrived at the tank, and kind of wedged ourselves into the encircling throng of tourists. The whales weren’t doing much but moseying around the perimeter of their cage, and occasionally breaking up the monotony with some spy-hopping.

(Beluga Whale, Spy-Hopping)

My posse of kids drifted away from me for a couple of minutes, wanting to see the scuba diver feed the sharks in the big central tank. I continued looking at the whales until one of them lifted its head from the water, turned sideways, and looked at me with one of its dark, startling eyes. And then it started to…well…express itself. At me.

It’s vocalizations started with a midrange sort of flatulent buzzing noise, like air being let out of an SUV-sized whoopee cushion. That was followed immediately by a series of high pitched rapid-fire chirps, which the whale kept repeating, and repeating, growing louder and louder, until it had the attention of pretty much every human in the greater Chicago area.

One of the kids came back over and said, “I don’t think that whale likes you.” A man standing a few feet away said, “What did you do to that whale?” He asked his question loudly, and there might’ve been a hint of accusation in his voice as well. I don’t know what he thought I might have “done” to the whale – the animal must’ve been 12 or 13 feet long, and probably weighed better than a ton – but it didn’t really matter. He had alerted the crowd to the idea that they might have a dangerous whale abuser in their midst.

(Beluga Whale, Talkin' Some Shit)

As the whale continued to chatter and squeak, I rounded up my kids and hustled them away. From somewhere near at hand, came the musical notes of a little girl’s voice: “I think that man hurt the whale.”

Well, that was it for me. Time to exit, stage right. I shot the little snot a wounded look, and kept my kids hurrying along.

As we gathered around the cylindrical tank were the shark feeding was to take place, one of the kids in my group asked me what I thought the whale might’ve been saying. I told him I didn’t know, but that the whale certainly seemed to have an opinion about me.

So, anyway…There are other instances of animals yelling at me, or otherwise being rude, but we can save those for another time. Until then don’t let a walrus spit on you.

Talk to you soon.