One moment the audience is all smiles as the whale trainer, an attractive woman with looks suited to the sunny Floridian clime, “plays” with the whale. Somewhere in the audience, a fat baby gurgles.
The whale strikes.
All conversation ceases. The audience is silent; the entire world is silent save for the violent splash of water as the trainer is dragged to the depths by the whale that has acted out its bloody namesake. (So much for being politically correct and referring to them as Orca.)
The first scream is loosed, breaking what was until that moment an almost holy silence. A stampede follows, the audience all but trampling one another in their rush to be anywhere but Sea World.
The crowd acts as if there is something to fear from the whale contained behind the six inches of impenetrable plastic, or from the broken corpse floating at the bottom of the tank. Even the fat baby cries.
Is there something to fear?
Perhaps the crowd runs from the reality of life: it’s not easy to admit to oneself just how uncertain a thing our lives really are- that one moment you really are the windshield, the next the bug.
The whale and trainer both are given media coverage: it's unearthed that this was just another in what are a string of deaths that have been associated with the whale.
If you play with fire, you’re going to get burnt, and yet it seems that everyone has a source of fire in their life: whether it be scuba diving, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, rock climbing, or even spicy food, the reality is that everyone takes risks.
The trainer took a risk in working with a killer whale/orca. She loved her work, and probably would have been miserable with a safe, ordinary desk job.
Now she’s dead, and can’t tell anyone whether it was worth it, whether or not she’d have died at the bottom of a fish tank or withered and old, without a clue who she was.
I would have run, too.
Oooh, dark theme. I loved it and my favorite parts were about how the crowd fled in fear/horror which I though was kind of weird too, as in, they were not under threat. Maybe an evolutionary response kicked in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think you will touch a nerve with all people (or at least those not in denial) about the nature of our lives being moment-to-moment and completely fragile. That is why my drug of choice is shopping...of course I will live another day to wear that new scarf, for ex., or live long enough to actually wear things out!...or making lists (the current exhibit on Lists at the Louvre posits that the mere act of making a list is antithetical to admitting our mortality...it presupposes that one will be here the next day and the next to complete what is on the list.)
On this topic, I do think that it is fundamentally wrong to have creatures in zoos, etc. It is a big reason why I don't like zoos. I don't mind seeing a stuffed dead animal in a museum but seeing them contained/restricted/limited while alive does bother me. I sort of buy into the argument about how live animals allow for study/science but it still makes me sad for the individual animals whose lives are lived out supposedly so we can learn or for the good of the rest of their species. OK. What's for dinner? (LOL yes I eat meat and wear fur and leather...but that's a different topic!)