"Yeah, it’s dark, dreary, and spattered with whale meat."
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Back in 1970, the body of a 45 foot long sperm whale weighing 8 tons washed up on an Oregon shore. It was pretty heavy for them to carry away, and no one was too keen on being responsible for cutting it up and carting away the pieces. So in the end, officials decided that detonating it with a half-ton of dynamite would be the best way of disposing of the carcass.
Which sounded like a good idea – until hundred pound chunks of decaying whale meat started raining down on the terrified onlookers…
Read all about it at TheExplodingWhale.com.
The site’s got the Taiwan angle covered, too. Because a couple years ago in the southern city of Tainan, gases due to decomposition built up and exploded within a dead whale’s belly as it was being transported on a flat-bed truck. Blood, blubber and whale guts wound up splattered all over the road.
Sure glad I wasn’t riding a scooter alongside when it happened.
(Images via TheExplodingWhale.com.)
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Ugh. I had to read that right after lunch, didn’t I?
Hey…
I don’t know you. I was just surfing the internet. A very interesting blog here. Are you really a foreigner in Taiwan? I wonder. I think you know more Taiwanese history than I do.
Let me introduce myself a bit. My name is Emily. I grew up in Taiwan, moved to US 6 years ago, when I was 14. I think you are an American too. Correct me if I am wrong. : )
Anyways, I enjoy reading your blog. I like it a lot. You do talk about real issues here, instead of people who put their love lives or sex lives online.
want to know you more. email me at emilychen0706@hotmail.com
Emily,
Yes, I am a foreigner – one who doesn’t know much more Mandarin than “Ni Hao.” But I CAN read the English papers here, and then form my own opinions.
Anyways, glad you like my blog.
Jason,
Well, it was a tough choice. Either another post about Chiang Kai-Shek statues…or one about EXPLODING WHALES.
Decisions, decisions.
There is however, a political angle that most of us may have missed. The whale episode happened less than two months before the assassination attempt on President Chen, and IN THE SAME CITY, no less.
And yet, astonishingly, no one has mentioned the possibility that that devious leviathan may have staged the bursting of its own abdominal cavity in order to obtain human sympathy for its fellow cetaceans! Clearly, there are grounds here for the formation of a special commission to discover the truth behind the mysterious wound to the creature’s belly…