Save the Whales

Recently my friend Sherilyn went to tour the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides. Which, by the way, has a fabulous museum: a Boston must-see). The Constitution was closed but there was a visiting German battleship (actual iron. Or maybe even steel. Much more effective). They were just in dock for a day or two and they said she could take a tour.

So Sherilyn was being shown around by young handsome navy guys who knew a lot about their job but not much about tour guiding. They took her up to see the main control room and showed her how they steer the ship. As they were walking out she looked up on the front window and saw a number of labeled drawings of a gray whale, showing it from different angles and in different positions. She asked what the drawings were for. And the navy guy said, "Oh. That is a whale. Sometimes when we are driving the boat, we drive over whales. This makes the Americans very angry. On our way here we drove over a whale. The Americans were very angry. So now we post drawings of whales to remind everyone to drive around the whales."

My middle school biology teacher always used to complain that campaigns to save endangered species always choose big attractive animals as their poster critters. “You see Save the Pandas and Save the Whales everywhere, but you never see a Save the Tapeworms T-shirt,” he would say.

While I *almost* appreciate his concern, it seems we still have some work to do on the whale front.