Catch Free Willy and make him do tricks

Okay I'm coming into this post "fired up" so be warned. Today I was greeted by a headline on CNN.com "Killer whale attacks Sea World trainer", oh crap I smell another Fox "When animals attack" out of this one. According to the story a thirty year old Orca named Kasatka deviated from its performance at SeaWorld and grabbed a handler and took him underwater.

I clicked on the video link to see interviews of parents and childrens reactions following the incident. One woman called it a tragedy...sorry lady but the "tragedy" happened long before the show. They have one of this earth's most incredible creatures swimming around in this little tank performing hundreds of "shows" yearly, that is the f*cking tragedy!!!

Next a kid rhetorically asked why the Orca would do something like that...Did anyone attempt to teach this kid that an amusement park is NOT the Orca's natural setting and that they were meant to roam the worlds oceans in tight-knit families and social structures, not jumping to entertain Tommy from Topeka.

The final lady interviewed was upset because she was there for her six year olds birthday and she didn't want her or her daughter to see a man die right then and there. No one wants that. But she went further and wondered why there wasn't a system in place to "take out" the Orca when something like this happened. Great lesson to teach the kiddies...take a wild animal and make it do tricks for you to foster the illusion it is happy and almost human-like and when it acts as nature meant, blow it out the f*cking water...how sweet.

Okay why am I so fired up? well as some might know about six years ago I went on a whale watching trip with a friend in the San Juan Islands. At the time my hope was to see an Orca or two in their environment. It just so happened that on the day we went all three pods (J,K &L) came together for a meeting and we were treated to eighty-plus Orcas socializing with one another.

Words don't do the scene justice, it was one of the most inspiring and beautiful things I have ever witnessed. You could see individual personalities come out as they played, flirted and generally socialized with eachother. When you are sitting on a boat silently and not more than a few feet away a twenty-five plus foot animal passes right beneath you it puts things in perspective. I saw more "humanity" in those whales that day then I often do with our own species. Where is the humanity in keeping these creatures penned up for our amusement?

Do yourself a favor, if you ever want to see Orcas, forego the sideshow and spend the money to see them in nature as they were meant to be.