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.