I couldn't believe what I was hearing when I turned on the news this morning...all the channels: MSNBC, CNN, Fox and the local news were using it as their lead story. In the early AM, on a Cape Cod beach, a beach just down the road from my house, 55 whales beached themselves after following into shore one ailing whale. Unfortunately, they stranded themselves on a beach that has an incredibly "low" low tide. You can walk out almost 2 miles on sand flats that are normally covered with water at high tide. 100's of volunteers showed up along with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Whale Rescue and other official groups, to try and keep the whales hydrated with wet towels and buckets of water. Unfortunately, since the tide is so low, it was impossible to physically move the whales into deep water until the tide changed. 10 whales succumbed but over 20 were successfully returned to the deeper waters and they are in the process of trying to move the remaining 20 or so. Seems everyone had heard the news and for hours now, the line of traffic trying to get to and from the beach has been backed up in front of my house. EVERYONE wanted to help. It was so, so sad to see these magnificent creatures struggling. Perhaps I was imagining it, but as I helped to pour buckets of water over their baking flesh (it was very hot today) you could almost see the look of thanks in their soulful eyes. No will will ever tell me that these are not thinking, feeling, sentient beings. Logan saw the whales (when she visited here last year) on a whale watch. I'm sure she knows what I mean! I was so moved by the whole experience. To know that they would choose to give up their lives rather than abandon just one of their pod was an almost life changing experience. It illustrates so beautifully the magnitude of the animal spirit. And as you can read in my signature below, no one captures the essence of that spirit more poignantly than the Cape Cod naturalist Henry Beston.
In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." Henry Beston
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