Some things are naturally gross, like seeing any U.S. president, except maybe Kennedy, naked. Anything that comes out of a four-year old's nose may also be assumed to be basically nasty. Other things in life can be more deceptive. Take for example whales. Whales don't seem very gross at first. They've got this sort of "mystic appeal;" gentle giants of the ocean and all of that. Some even sing gentle songs as they glide beneath the waves, but damn, are these guys gross.
First of all, are the killer whales. (Technically porpoises but shhhh.) These guys are one of the few animals on the planet that will kill for fun. One of their favorite tricks is to get into water right off a sea lion colony and come roaring in after anybody foolish enough to get in the water. What a spectacle. The froth turns red as the whale bites into the three hundred pound, fatty body of the sea lion. There's the frantic flapping and head tossing as the doomed lion tries to escape and the whale adjusts its grip.
Then comes the toss. The playful whale tosses the mangled lion high into the air as only a twelve-ton homicidal maniac can. Blood and gore fly from the doomed lion and it splatters back into the water while its pod mates look on helplessly from the shore. If it's got any life left in it, it can make another break for shore but there no real point, because here's our whale again. Chomp, toss; chomp toss. What a bloody mess. And best of all, when our hero is done, he's likely to leave the body of the lion behind. He was just having a bit of fun. Someone else (seagulls maybe) can have the remains of the sea lion.
I've often wondered if murdered sea lion wasn't a kind of cologne for killer whales.
"Hey baby. Wanna swim with a real whale?"
"Ooo is that scent of lion spleen? Take me now."
What I really wanted to talk about was what happens when whales die. Think about it. Thirty-two tons of muscle, fat and etc. give up the ghost and start floating around the ocean. It's got to be pretty nasty eh? Let's take a look.
The easiest way to think about a dead whale is as a large, waterproof sack. At first this sack is full of whale parts as you'd expect them; heart, muscles that kind of thing. But, as the body rolls and bobs in the sun, more and more of this matter breaks down into decomposition products; gore for short.
The other important thing that is happening inside the ex-whale is that it is slowly filling up with gasses as its body parts decay. Some of this gas escapes out the blow hole and other openings but most of it gets trapped behind the thick wall of blubber that lines the skin of whales.
After a week or more (depending on the weather) something totally awesome happens. The whale bursts. I like to imagine this as an explosive event blowing seagulls into the air and splattering bits of stuff all over the waves. Even if it's more of a hissing leak, can you imagine the smell?
After popping, the whale's body gets split up and goes its separate ways. The skin stays on the surface occasionally washing ashore somewhere and making news as a new life form until someone figures out it's just a whale skin. Lots of the organs and stuff become an oily smear of the surface that just kind of drift apart. The bones, however have an interesting destiny.
Whale bones fall out of the popped carcass, often more or less intact, and settle to the bottom of the ocean. There they are fed on by a strange species of tube worm that seems to eat nothing else. What makes these creature gross (besides the fact that they are spineless tube worms) is that all of the visible worms are female. Thousands of the males wriggle in the guts of the female, living off of her and waiting for the chance to mate. Hmmm. Sounds like a lot of guys I actually know.
The final bit of whale gore may actually be the funniest thing ever caught on film. In the early seventies, in Oregon, a dead whale washed up on the beach in an affluent neighborhood. No one knew what to do so, logically, they called the highway department. The highway department, being heavy on dynamite and light on common sense, decided they would...Well, I'll let you see for yourself. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, this gory fiasco has been preserved for all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuaSY0cMK8&ab_channel=KATUClassic
Sure beats the hell out of Free Willie doesn't it? Now get out there and write.
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The Gory Details (Gross)
HorrorBetween 2004 and 2008 I wrote a series of "Tips for Writers" for Nocturnal Ooze magazine vaguely about what would happen in real life if you did the things they do in movies but mostly about the gross out. I've always loved them and so have taken...
