"The Whales Are In Charge"

Unfortunately, it's beginning to look as if this story may not have a happy ending. Either that, or these whales are a lot smarter than people are giving them credit for, and are toying with everyone:

"The whales are in charge, obviously, and we have to be accommodating to what they want to do," said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service. "But we have to seize on any opportunity we have to urge them to get down the river."

On Tuesday, the whales continued to frustrate a small army of humans who tried to help. An armada of boats deployed noise-making pipes across the Sacramento River for three hours, making a dull clanking that could be heard by spectators on shore.

It seemed to have no direct effect on the whales' behavior, despite the collective will of hundreds of spectators observing from the water's edge."

(Sacramento Bee, May 23)

Meanwhile, Bee columnist Marcos Breton puts his cynicism in check (registration required), and offers the following:

I started this column with the intention of slamming them and the people fascinated by them. But I don't have the heart.

What would be gained by trashing the parents who took their kids to whale-watch in Sacramento -- and the media attention that followed?

And what would be gained by lecturing you for caring more about stray whales -- about mammals steeped in mythology -- than complex issues mired in politics?

Nothing. There is no cynicism being sold here, because cynicism takes no imagination.

If anything, the whales seem like a metaphor for issues beyond our control. They are reminders of how we can't shape nature to our liking.

They underscore how some issues tug at our hearts for reasons that make no sense.

Where else but along the Delta do you see such a vivid collection of well-meaning people and opportunists, with cynics sniping from the sidelines?

Maybe the whales die. Maybe they make it back to sea. Either way, life on land awaits our attention -- if we choose to pay attention.

I think Breton has it mostly right, although I'm not sure he gives his readers enough credit. Most people, I suspect, are paying attention to bigger issues back on land, and are so discouraged about the prospects of finding solutions to the weighty problems of the day that the whale story has been a welcome diversion. If they make it back safely, that is.