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Whale Explodes on a City Street News Report: Whale Transported through Taipei, Taiwan, 2004 The whale had a five foot penis, and when its belly exploded, the penis was left intact. It was already dead and on a flat bed truck, the same kind they bring to pick up fancy cars whose owners don’t want them towed the old fashioned way, and the heat had baked it until the gasses in its guts swelled and, well, you can imagine what it was like: shop windows splattered, cars smothered in the thick entrails, walkers at lunch time not going back to the office and wondering how they’d get home with the slick and the stink on them. Traffic was held up for hours. The researchers waiting for the carcass fumed, their science in jeopardy, but people came on foot when they saw and heard this news on the news. And the penis was wonderful. The men gathered to see it. They waded through the ankle deep muck and some even reached out a hand to stroke a small length of it. One took out a jack knife and sliced a strip which he put in his pocket before turning away, one hand over his mouth and nose. One woman on the sidewalk urged her husband out onto the street. They had no babies, and maybe if he touched it, who knows? Strange things can happen. By the time the roadway was opened and the city workers had hauled the plastic bags away and had hosed the pavement down, the cars, the store windows, the people who needed hosing, too, the penis was all but gone, a ragged crevasse into the whale’s underbelly drawing no more attention than the gaping guts which the workers stuffed back into the beast the best they could, then the flatbed moved on, the drivers tired and just wanting to go home, their own penises slack and hidden on their tired thighs.
Laura McCullough | Mudlark No. 32 |