A week ago, an 80-foot-long whale appeared on the beach in the small Canadian town of Trout River, Newfoundland.
Since it washed ashore, the rotting mass of blubber is bloated “with combustible methane gas and emitting a powerful stench.”
Basically, the thing could blow at any moment.
To make matters worse, the dead visitor is a blue whale, and the largest living animal on the planet. The gas and bloating has caused the mammal is double in size.
So now what?
“If that whale does explode, we don’t know what danger that would be to our infrastructure … or to people,” Trout River’s town clerk, Emily Butler, . Butler says the whale “looks as if it’s a big balloon, from a distance.” Butler worries that what will happen if the carcass remains grounded near the town’s historic wooden boardwalk. “It’s only a matter of time — as the weather warms up, it’s only going to [get] worse,” she tells the CBC.
Most people involved want to just push the blue beast back out to sea and let it possibly become someone else’s problem down the road.
The town is home to about six hundred people. Everyone start pushing!
Here’s video of the massive beast.
And this is just for fun.
A Whale Of A Problem: Town Faces Threat Of Exploding Carcass [NPR]