Wednesday, January 14, 2015

T137F

We had a sort of a half-sunny day which is nice in January. The farmer was off looking for the orcas. The farmer has gotten obsessed with the orcas, the Sound is full of them this year, and the T137s from the T-Pod spend a lot of their time trolling through the farmer's crabbing spot down between Longbranch and Anderson Island. The Orcas are looking for seals, hard luck for the seals, because they are easy to find down there. The Ts have a baby with them and the farmer is obsessed with trying to catch a glimpse of the T-Baby. The Ts in the pod are named after their mother, T137, so there is T137a, T137b, T137c etc, and so on like that until T137 stops having babies.

So anyway since it was a half-sunny day and since there was no wind at all the farmer was going to take the little boat out, the little 14-foot boat, which would be a great spot from which to see a 20 foot whale, especially the gigantic male of the T137 pod who likes nothing better than swimming right under a tiny boat and flipping on his back to take a good look at the occupants,  yes I certainly would love to see that while sitting inside a 14 foot aluminum boat with a motor that doesn't always start. It has always been a dream of mine, what little goat wouldn't love to go to sea and take a selfie with a gigantic whale in the background, especially one like the T male with his majestic dorsal fin, probably at least five feet high, yes indeed. Not.

Anyway there was something wrong with the lights on the trailer and so the farmer went down to the boat launch with binoculars and no boat and spent an hour or so scanning Drayton Passage and of course didn't see anything, not even a seal. While the farmer was gone Moldy laid down and had a baby. No one was more surprised than Moldy, because she wasn't bred, and nobody else was either, not until the spring, and so everyone looked on with polite interest. Moldy had the baby with no difficulty but Winnie had to notify her that it was hers because she was so shocked when she turned around and saw it.

"Somebody had a baby!" Moldy bellowed informatively.

"Yes," said Winnie. "You."

"I think I would know if I had a baby!" Moldy bellowed.

"Yes," said Winnie. "So would I."

At this point the baby advanced and began drinking milk from Moldy and Moldy began bellowing, "I had a Baby! I had a Baby!"

This was on a continuous loop for one hour until the farmer came back and saw what had happened and Moldy was rushed up to the barn with her new baby, which ought to have been named "Ihadda" but instead is being called Baby F, or Effie, just temporarily (forever) until the farmer thinks of a better name, since this is an F year. Amongst ourselves we call it T137f. The tiny whale.