Saving the Whales

Hippies are animal-loving folks and, as such, support wildlife preservation and conservation efforts. They get especially excited about efforts to “save” certain species facing extinction. Sometimes, the situation for these threatened creatures is so dire that the normally pacifist hippies take up arms in defense of them, such as the crazy fat bearded dude on that Whale Wars TV program on Animal Planet. That guy – I think his name is Paul Watson, but it might as well be Walrus – thinks it’s OK to send his young hippie crew out in tiny inflatable dinghies to try and stop massive Japanese whalers from harpooning their target. The thing is, they fail. Even if they every now and again are successful in delaying the Japanese fleet’s catch, the fleet nonetheless fills its quota, year after year. Why does that young hippie crew stay on, knowing full well that their efforts are futile? Bragging rights, that’s all. They get the right, in perpetuity, to tell yarns about how they “took on the whale killers” back in the day. Their friends will all be impressed, at least the first dozen times they hear the tales. Their children will have cause to be proud of their mothers and fathers. But in the end, the only whales those kids will see will be the ones at SeaWorld.