FiftyFourandAHalf

Many years ago when I lived in a not terribly safe neighborhood in DC, two work colleagues/friends of mine were discussing safety precautions to be used in case we were ever assaulted.

“I heard that if someone tries to rape you,” Ellen said, “the best thing to do is to poop in your pants.  Nobody wants to rape a person with poopy pants”

“That won’t be hard for me to do,” I said.  “I can poop on command.”  My colitis-that-was-really-Crohn’s was raging in those days.  “Maybe I can sell some!”

Our colleague, John, got a mischievous look on his face.  “But what if you’ve just gone?” John asked.  He then stood up from his desk, and started grunting as if he were pooping.  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, Mr. Rapist.” John grunted some more, laughing. “I’m almost ready for you …  OK, NOW try to take me!”

We didn’t get a lot of work done those days.  But it was a valuable lesson in self-defense.

Sadly, Keri Wilk, an undersea photographer, wasn’t in the room with us.  Because that self-defense lesson might have come in handy for him just recently.  Because recently he learned that sometimes, a little poop can be the best defense.

You see, according to the article in the Huffington Post, photographer Keri Wilk had a crappy experience when he got up close and, ummm, personal, with a sperm whale.  Apparently Keri and his fellow divers made the whale a wee bit nervous.

While leading a group on an underwater whale photography expedition off the coast of the Caribbean island, Keri and four others were approached by what appeared to be a perfectly calm whale.

The whale approached them, stopped, pointed straight downward, and then in Keri’s words, “the storm began.”

If only Keri and his friends had given the poor whale a little privacy, well then, the storm might have been short-lived.  But noooooooooo.

Instead, Keri and friends experienced a “Poopnado.”

“At first, it seemed like a regular bowel movement… sperm whales are often seen defecating, especially while diving, so we didn’t think much of it initially. It pointed itself down, but then, rather than continuing its dive, it remained at the surface, continuing the bowel movement for a startling length of time,” explains Keri.

“The 4 of us looked at each other with confusion, then back at the whale, expecting that any second its call from nature would be ended, and that it would descend to the depths for another meal as they usually do. Instead, the whale bobbed up and down, spun around in circles, and waved poop in every direction for several minutes while 4 of us in the water sat back and watched!”

The minute by minute photos are pretty amusing, but I think you might just want to go to the full article rather than see that much poop on my blog site.  I do have my standards, you know.  Low as they may be.

The full spread of pictures is, ummm, more overwhelming.

There simply is no reason for you to bother reading the news.  Or watching it.  Because I promise you, if there is anything you need to know, anything at all, I will tell you about it.

Including things you didn’t even know you wanted to know about.