A WHALE OF A STORY!

Lots of you may have already read this story, but when it came to me this morning as a forward, I thought it was worth passing on (but first I checked truthorfiction.com, thanks to Steve Allen, who alerted me to that web site). It seems to check out, so here it is, thanks to Helen Morrison who forwarded it to me:

The Whale

If you read the front page story of the SF Chronicle,
you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed an environmental group for help.

Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her ..

a very dangerous proposition. One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. (Click on photos to enlarge them.)

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed gently around --- she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.


The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you, and all those you love,
be so fortunate ...
to be surrounded by people
who will help you get untangled
from the things that are binding you.