Over my dead body!
Posted on 09/07/2002 12:16:20 PM PDT by Tancred
Well, at least he won't be shot.
No, Keiko, the Free Willy whale, may still not know much about fending for his fat self, but the good people of Norway have looked into their good Norwegian hearts and decided not to give up on the blubbery blob and pump him full of lead.
Before you ask, "Who would dare suggest making seafood of Keiko?" let's just tell you: Nils Oien.
This week, the Norwegian whale expert suggested shooting the marine movie star as a humane way of ending what he sees as fruitless attempts to make Keiko a self-sufficient member of the underwater race.
"It would be better to put him to death," Oien told the Norway state radio station NRK.
Suffice to say Mr. Oien's fellow Norwegians did not agree.
Norway has been up to its Ibsen volumes with Keiko controversies since the big fella (that would be Keiko, not Oien) turned up in a coastal inlet there last weekend, six weeks after being sprung from the good life (aka a captivity pen) in Iceland.
Thus began another star-crossed chapter in the star-crossed life of Hollywood's biggest (literally) star.
Keiko, now 25, was first taken in by humans in 1979 when he was captured near Iceland. He went on to live several quiet years in captivity in Canada and Mexico.
In 1993, he starred in the original Free Willy flick, about an endangered killer whale (Keiko) and the little boy ( Jason James Richter) who comes to his rescue.
Although two Free Willy sequels followed, Keiko returned to his holding pen. (He was replaced in the new movies by animatronic orcas.)
While Keiko likely would have enjoyed kicking back and being handfed hundreds of pounds of fish daily in the comfort of an aquarium, activists sought to produce a sequel of their own: Free Keiko.
In 1998, Keiko was moved from Oregon to Iceland where the Free Willy Keiko Foundation refocused efforts to prep the pampered thesp for life on the open sea.
In August, Keiko's big adventure began: He was set free! He proceeded to swim all of 870 miles before he ended up right back where he seems to think he belongs--in that Norwegian fjord with his fans. His human fans. The ones who bring him food and pet him.
"It is clear that Keiko is having trouble with life in the wild," Jan Einarsen, an aquarium director in Norway, tells the Associated Press. "He needs help."
But Norway officials don't want just anybody to give Keiko help (or food). Today, they barred the star's fans from coming within 165 feet of him. They say they're not trying to punish Keiko; they're trying to control who has access to him.
They're also trying--once again--to convince Keiko that it's not human beings he likes, it's his fellow fishies.
"All the attention and feeding were preventing him from returning to a natural life," says Ivar Roen, a vet who works near the Keiko-occupied fjord, to the wire service.
Of course, it appears Keiko's definition of a "natural life" differs from the experts. Maybe if he were threatened at gunpoint...
If you kill the whale, we can eat for a week, maybe more...
Over my dead body!
Blubber = whale oil
Usefull for patch lube, lamps, etc.
Definitely a hard to find commodity.
| it could be smoked for use later. That reminds me of that marathon movie from the ' 70s: They Smoke Fishes, Don't They?. |
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