didn't they do whale

Those of you who have been keeping an eye on developments with the possible imminent exploding whale situation in Newfoundland should be advised that it now looks as if the whale has taken the less exciting course of action and sprung a slow leak, making it now very unlikely that it's going to go pop or, indeed, kablooie. I know this because I've been keeping up with the latest news at hasthewhaleexplodedyet.com which has all the information you need, and the latest picture shows the whale all deflated and wrinkly, like a week-old party balloon.

Which is a pity, in many ways - though I expect the residents of the small Newfoundland town where this latest blubbery behemoth washed up are fairly relieved not to have their houses festooned in rotting whale entrails - because exploding whales are awesome, as I seem to remember saying towards the end of this earlier post. One should never miss an opportunity to link to the video of the Oregon whale-dynamiting in 1970, for instance, so here it is. No video exists, as far as I know, of the actual moment the Taiwanese sperm whale went off, though there is plenty of the gory aftermath.

There are a couple of other notable incidents, though - this one from the Faroe Islands where a sperm whale explodes while a marine biologist is trying to cut it open, and this one from Uruguay where the same thing happens (in a slightly less spectacular way, it must be said) while a whale carcass is being loaded onto a truck for disposal. I think the best of the rest is probably this one from somewhere in the Netherlands - what really makes it is the unflappable yellow-coated guy just phlegmatically sucking on his pipe as the malodorous tentacly Lovecraftian horror unfolds all around him.