Animal Fables: Whale

Once upon a time, there lived an over­weight whale called Phyllis.

Of course, nobody told Phyl­lis that she was over­weight. She was already large — what with being a whale and everything — and she had rather a short tem­per too, par­tic­u­larly when she was peck­ish. The last thing you want to do to an over­weight whale in a bad mood is sug­gest to her that she might be indul­ging in a few too many her­ring snacks between meals.

Secretly, how­ever, Phyl­lis had some sus­pi­cions about her size. First, there was the way in which all the smal­ler fish would be sent fly­ing out of the water whenever she dived — or rather, belly­flopped — under the waves. Then there were the reac­tions of her friends. Invari­ably, before a Sat­urday night out on the seabed with the girls, she would exam­ine her­self in the mir­ror and ask them “Do my flukes look big in this?” Their deni­als were so swift and so effus­ive that Phyl­lis couldn’t help but think they were protest­ing just a little too much. She didn’t believe for a moment that they were jeal­ous of her shapely curves and womanly dorsal fin, as they claimed.

Phyl­lis became depressed, and being miser­able she ate greater amounts of her­ring. So as a con­sequence, the her­ring were depressed too, because their fam­il­ies were being decim­ated by such a prodi­gious appet­ite. This upset poor Phyl­lis all the more, since she couldn’t even find solace in her food. There’s just no enjoy­ment in eat­ing a sui­cidal her­ring, as it weeps and moans and begs to be torn apart and swal­lowed because it no longer sees any reason to live.

One night, Phyl­lis decided she’d had enough. She packed a small bag — of pickled her­ring, just in case she got hungry on the way — and left her colony for good. She was going to find some­where new, some­where big­ger, some­where with enough space for a whale to really thrash its tail and pass the time play­ing kiss chase with passing boats. Her friends had always told her, in the days when she still dated and before her obses­sion with her weight took over, that there were plenty more fish in the sea. Well, she had resolved to go and find them. Make friends with them. And eat them.

Phyl­lis swam and swam and swam. As she trav­elled, she looked around her for a glimpse of the wide open expanse of sea that she so wished to make her new home, but there was noth­ing. Noth­ing. In fact, although she could barely believe what she was see­ing, rather than get­ting more spa­cious, the seas actu­ally seemed to be get­ting smaller.

“Or maybe I’m still get­ting big­ger!” wailed Phyl­lis, throw­ing her very last emer­gency pickled her­ring into her not incon­sid­er­able mouth.

She was about to accept her inev­it­able fail­ure, turn on her tail and head back to the colony, when she real­ised that she couldn’t. She couldn’t phys­ic­ally turn. Not on her tail or any­thing else, for that mat­ter. There just wasn’t enough room. The seas really had got smal­ler. Much, much smaller.

As Phyl­lis pondered her pre­dic­a­ment, she noticed that she was being sur­roun­ded by boats. People were lean­ing over the sides to take pho­to­graphs — of her! “Over here, Phyl­lis! Smile for the cam­eras, love! Show us your blowhole, darlin’!” A news reporter was hold­ing out a large micro­phone and try­ing to con­duct an exclus­ive inter­view with her, in order to find out why such a huge whale had turned up in the Thames Estu­ary. Divers were jump­ing in the water to exam­ine her, and as she smiled at them she couldn’t res­ist eye­ing each one up as a poten­tial mid-afternoon snack, before decid­ing that they looked a little too rub­bery to swal­low and would prob­ably give her dread­ful indigestion.

Within a few short hours, Phyl­lis had become the centre of atten­tion. Crowds of sight­seers had gathered — not to laugh at her for being over­weight, but to gasp in admir­a­tion at her awe-inspiring size. How­ever, there was no escap­ing the fact that her situ­ation — as well as her room to man­oeuvre — was get­ting more lim­ited by the minute. Plus, she was feel­ing very hungry indeed.

The boats and tugs that had been con­stantly circ­ling Phyl­lis began to get closer, edging her back­wards and gently coax­ing her to turn towards the sea again. To fur­ther encour­age her, another ves­sel appeared behind her and began empty­ing con­tain­ers of deli­cious her­ring into the water.

“Her­ring!” exclaimed Phyl­lis. “Lovely, lovely herring!”

For this lost, dis­or­i­ent­ated and by now raven­ous whale, there simply could be no greater tempta­tion than the sight and smell of free fish food being flung in her gen­eral dir­ec­tion. It was bet­ter than any under­wa­ter takeaway she had ever ordered. There was no ques­tion about it — she just had to get some of that her­ring to stave off her rum­bling stomach.

Phyl­lis screwed her eyes tight shut in con­cen­tra­tion and breathed in. And in. And in a bit more. Squeez­ing her huge body as small as pos­sible, she star­ted to turn. Wor­ried fresh­wa­ter fish stared in alarm, their eyes bul­ging out of their heads even more than usual, then dar­ted off in every dir­ec­tion, ter­ri­fied of the cata­clysm that was about to strike.

There was a sud­den loud pop and the sen­sa­tion of a rush­ing whirl­pool of water cas­cad­ing through the estu­ary on all sides. Then silence. When Phyl­lis nervously opened her eyes, she found her­self gaz­ing back towards the ocean. In front of her, guid­ing her to free­dom, lay a float­ing, bob­bing path of her­ring which she eagerly fol­lowed, hun­grily swal­low­ing each one after the other. She had always loved her food, but fish had never tasted quite so good as they did at that moment.

Thrash­ing her massive tail in sheer delight, Phyl­lis steered her enorm­ous blub­bery bulk through the water and out, out into the wide expanse of the deep blue sea.

“It’s not me that got big,” she thought to her­self hap­pily, as she veered off in the dir­ec­tion of home, “It’s the seas that got small”.

The End.

See also: the ori­ginal Animal Fables series.