Animal Stories

I finally saw my dream coming true. I didn’t win the lottery, as I was hoping, but my business was going well and after a few years of hard work I decided to follow my dream and go see the world. Now I finally made time to go on a ship crew…

Feeling like the master of the world, I packed my bags and headed to the ocean. It was going to be a long way and a lot of lazy days were showing ahead. Enjoying the water, the nature, relaxing and enjoying life. It seemed that I forgot how to.

Even if it was mid summer, the breeze cooled my face and made me stay on the deck for hours, staring at the seagles and the immensity of water…I was going far away, to see the beauties and wonders of the world. What I didn’t know was the fact that this trip would change my whole view over life…

Armed with touristic maps and guides, I tried to find out as much as possible about the exotic places I was going to get to. Clear blue waters, souveniers, wonderful animals and people with such different occupations from what I was used to! And I was going to see all that!

Feeling enthusiastic like a child, after the sun tanned my face for so many days, I was told that we only have one more day left on the water. I felt a little disappointed because I didn’t see the whales swimming, as they promised, but I was still hoping for dolphins. And they didn’t fail me! Being the last day on the ship, I decided to wake up early and takes pictures of the sunrise. Boy, what spectacular framed memories will these make in my office!

I was getting a bit chilly when something popping out of the water made me forget about it. It was indeed a dolphin! No, wait, there are more! And there is a little one! Must be a baby. I was over my head with joy, trying to take pictures as they swam along with the ship, jumping out of the water and playing. Very curious, I was following the baby’s moves and I saw him approach a floating…thing. It started playing with it, throwing the object in the air and making circles around it, after it landed on the water again. But the trick only lasted for a few seconds, because when the object hit the water for the third time, a black substance spread from it, on the tiny dolphin’s head. Then I heard a squeeking sound and junior was gone into the deep. All the other followed in a rush. “They act like humans”, I said to myself, disappointed that my show had ended.

Alone in the cold morning breeze, I completely forgot about my sunset…maybe because this morning the sun never showed. I was busy admiring the dolphins and didn’t see the clouds on the sky. And I was so busy that I didn’t notice that there were more floating objects on the water’s surface…They were mostly plastic bags and can with industrial oil.
Outraged at the people, myself and the whole world, I demanded to see the captain or someone who could answer my question. The money I had paid for this trip proved that even the captain is an ordinary man…I was promised whales! Where were they? The agency said that in so many weeks spent on the ocean, you can see whales almost every two days or so…

But the agency doesn’t know or care, explained the captain. For a moment I thought that he was amused, but then I saw a sad look on his face. The whales disappeared for about 2 years now, since the number of harbours increased and since the rich people decided that they want to become more rich, installing huge iron cranes and mechanisms on fake platforms in the ocean, for getting all the oil…Even the dolphins are seen more rarely and often the natives find dead animals on the shore…It was even in a local newspaper that a fisherman found a dead dolphin with a plastic bag on its head and some algaes, which were assumed to gotten it stuck there…But of course that it never crossed the borders of the small island, as the newspaper was bought by a rich white man, and then dissolved.

I had nothing more to say…I couldn’t say anything more. Each passenger received as souvenier a shark tooth. I didn’t want mine. I could only spend a few days on my exotic dream island, as the stories that I heard every day only ruined my vacation. Some were told, some were seen…The commerce with everything that can be found alive in the ocean was flourishing and all the excited tourists paid great deals of money for them. But I only had one word in my head…POLLUTION.
Why can’t people see what they are destroying? The waters, the animals, the plants, the life…their lives! Maybe not theirs yet, but what about their children and grandchildren? Why are they so greedy and stupid? Why do they do harm to what keeps us alive? The water…the Earth.

So my trip brought only sadness and frustration of being able to do nothing about it…The modern newspapers talk about it, the factories recieve fines, we invented a Green Day for Earth and we like to debate it for ever, but we don’t actually do something…So instead of filling my office with beautiful clear ocean pictures, I framed the following: