Exploding Whale Day

  

At this point the majority of you are saying "What the heck?", while a few oddball savants are saying "A bit early, isn't it?".   For the second group I'll just say that given all the excitement in our political arena I'm not sure that one week after the election a story about putrid blubber raining down from the sky would stand out in the least.

So....

There is actually a considerable, er, corpus of data on dead, beached whales blowing up.  Sometimes just by the natural, if disgusting, process of decomposition.  But by far the most exciting example of the genre occurred back in 1970, and had the assistance of a poorly thought out half ton of dynamite.

A 45 ton sperm whale washed up on the beach at Florence Oregon on November 9th.  After three days in which the whale got stinkier, it was decided that the best course of action would be to blow the whale up with explosives.  The idea being that it would then be in smaller bits which would either be eaten by the converging mob of seagulls or be in small enough parts that hauling them away would be simpler.  Beaches were at that time under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Highway Department, an outfit who had a bit of experience in blowing up obstructions.  It did not go well.  No, not well at all.......

Delightfully this event has become part of local lore.  There is an Exploding Whale Memorial Park in downtown Florence.  Every November the locals hold Exploding Whale Days.  Delightfully, the cub reporter who appeared in the above video 54 years ago is still with us and will be in attendance!  I can't actually find out much more about the festival.  It seems to involve a funky art show and at 3:45, a public toast in memory of the whale.  I like that.

Florence Oregon is not too far from Eugene where they have a minor league baseball team.  It is somewhat in vogue - probably for extra merch sales - for teams to have special "alternate uniforms".  So last year the Eugene Emeralds played a few games as the "Exploding Whales".  

The logo is actually a lot cooler than the uniforms.....

Well, food for thought.  This probably caught my eye based on our own experiences sighting a similar beached whale on our Florida trip in March.  The folks in charge of that situation appear to have been well aware of the Exploding Whale legend, and learned from it.

So a Happy Exploding Whale Day to you, one and all.  When the actual official day rolls around on November 12th lets hope the air is not filled with panic and a fine mist of rancid goo.