WIGGUM DAILY

 

This is the first in a three-part FEATURE on WHALES. Sort of a yin-yang-yin thing really. The two "yin" pieces are from the archives of the internet. In fact item #2 was one of the first videos I ever saw on the internet, back in 1995 when it took the best part of a whole day to download over a 28.8Kbps dial-up modem. Remember dial-up…    Anyway, I digress.

 

 

Back on Saturday January 17th, 2004 a 17m SPERM WHALE weighing about 60,000kg beached itself for no apparent reason on the southwest coastal shores of the Tawainese island of TAINAN.  Marine biologists from nearby NATIONAL CHENG KUNG UNIVERSITY  decided that they would like to make the most of this rare zoological specimen that had presented itself to them.  So they organised for it to be transported by truck from the beach to their research facility where they could do there work. 

 

All sounds fine and dandy so far.  What could go wrong ?  Well, like most dead mammals, whales decompose and a by product of this natural  decomposition are a number of gases that build up inside the body cavity. This is the bloating we see in dead things at the side of the road as we whizz by at 100km/h, thankful it wasn’t our car that ended the life of that kangaroo, wombat or European backpacker.

 

So they loaded the whale carcass onto the truck.  Details of this part are sketchy at best. Presumabley it required large amounts of grunting and "one.. two.. three.. LIFT !!!"  The problem for the people of Tainan island occurred when the whale laden truck was travelling through the busy streets of the downtown districts.  Why plot a route that goes through a built up urban environment you might ask ? Well I did some further research and there are reasons.

 

Firstly, the whale washed up on the south-west coast of the island. The university is on the eastern side of the island. So in order to get from A to B you have to go through some towns. Also, unconfirmed reports indicate that the truck was only rented for the day by the university and they had to get it back before 5pm or risk losing the $50 deposit. Further unconfirmed sources say the driver of the truck had just recently purchased a fancy new Navman GPS Navigation device and it also told him the fastest way to get a whale from A to B was through the streets of the commercial district.

 

Whatever the reasons are, and were not here to condemn any Wan, you can click on the pics below to see just what happens when the pressure of decompositional gases inside a dead whale overcomes the structural integrity of the rotting carcass…