March 2, 2010; Wild Things

Here's the thing:

You take a chihuahua at the pound and you say, "Look, we're running out of pound space, so what we're going to do is put the chihuahua with the pit bull. They'll have fun. The chihuahua will teach him some tricks and soon they'll be friends." So then you go to the pit bull pen and, just to get things started, you put the chihuahua on the pit bull's back—like an animal trick!—and then move back from the pen. Well, tell me, what do you think will happen?

Or better: you have this milquetoast accountant who has been arrested for tax-fraud, and he goes to the penitentiary and when he gets there the warden says, "We're running out of space and we only have these little cells, but we have an idea. We're going to put you with Max the Ax and here's why: we want you to train him...tame him, if you will. After a while, when you've done that, we want you to, like, ride on his back in the annual prison rodeo! How does that sound?" The milquetoast would be doubtful of success, but what choice does he have? Well, tell me, what do you think will happen?

Easy, ain't it?: the chihuahua would get flung in the air by the pitbull and caught in his mouth, crunched about a bit and then swallowed only to reappear as a slightly less yappy turd a few days later. The accountant, meanwhile, would become a rodeo ride himself, having every hole on his body crammed in some hideous way before Max the Ax sprayed the milquetoast's bodily fluids around the tiny cell like a Dali on amphetamines.

So please, tell me, why did anyone expect anything any different from a whale know as a "killer" who lives in a pool which, to an animal of this hugeness is the size of a toilet bowl, when a person starts riding on his back, standing on his nose and then leaping into the air to dive into his little body of water? Why did anyone expect that the whale and the so-called trainer would be "friends" when, in any animal's mind, the trainer is not a friend but a warden; a slaver, if you will. Of course some little human is going to end up dead as surely as Milquetoast ended up dead in that cell with Max.

But here's the other thing.

It is surprising to me that you, the humans, find it hilarious. I mean, didn't this dead woman mean anything to anybody? Didn't she have a family? Don't you care? Yet the running gag on television is the broad who got eaten by the whale. We, in the animal kingdom, rightly find this whole fiasco insanely funny (I'm telling you, whenever we meet each other on the street we only have to say "Sea World" and we're doubled up with laughter), it is odd that you do too.

I mean, I even asked Skeeter what this meant and he said, "In situations of moral ambiguity, human life becomes a punch line."

Now I don't know if he was being wise or just trying to shut me up because he was reading. But I did think about it. Perhaps, ultimately, human life is just a punch line. Maybe that's as it should be; 'cause, let's face it, human existence is like a bad joke—it goes on and on and on without an obvious point and ends with a splat. If you're lucky, that splat (or chomp/thrash/drown) merits a giggle.