Quick apoologies for the lack of posts for the past few weeks. - I was only at home for one week and since I've got back every evening has seemed to be busy with every day full as the annual plan comes into view. Boring work stuff that is totally unrelated to flowers and plants - as is this post.
One of the... highlights?... could you call it a highlight - well something I had wanted to see, in a way though ... anyhow - a sperm whale beached on Balmedie Beach about 5 miles south of us and 5 M north of Aberdeen. The authorities rteckon that it was dead or very close to death when it beached and was certainly gone by the time anyone in authority arrived.
I battled through a huge cold wind and pouring rain to gawk at it as did many others - as I knew that his mioght be my only chance ever to see a real sperm whale.
The body was the size of a school bus and stank to high heaven by the time I saw it 2 days after death. Despite the roaring gale blasting off the sea across the beach it was still possible to smeel the carcase from 100m down the beach. How the smell could possibly reach that far I don't know. But it did.
Even an hour after leaving I could still smell/taste the dead whale in my throat and my wife said that she could smell it on my clothes (which had been sand blasted at the time).
There were a couple of things about the whale which I knew intellectually (had read/seen) but which I didn't truly appreciate until I saw the body. The head is at least 1/3 of the body length but the thing that really amazed was the narrowness and thiness of the lower jaw. I guess i had always seen pictures/videop of the whales from the side where the mass of the lower jaw is hidden and you imagine that it more like a side portrait of a person but, as you can see from below - the bottom jaw is maybe six inches to a foot across at most while the head is a good two to three metres thick. it is as if a toothpick was laid along the underside of a potato -very strange.
So is it weird to push through driving rain to look at a dead body. it knid of has the same fascination as exotic road kill - I have only ever seen badgers as road kill - two or three times around Aberdeenshire - and the size of them was amazing. I guess that for many of us roadkill is as close as we get to most big wildlife nowadays but at least it is a real experience as opposed to watching something on the TV where the picture may be prettier and the surroundings are more comfortable but TV can never replace an actual experience (even if it is of a dead animal) same as watching gardening shows will never replace smelling a real flower.
I could go on for a while wittering on about real vs reported and dead vs live but I won't. I'll just apologise once again for the lack of posts and assure you that I will be posting a bit more frequently in the runup to the end of the year.
