They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,
No one you see, is smarter than he,
And we know Flipper, lives in a world full of wonder,
Flying there under, under the sea!
Everyone loves the king of the sea,
ever so kind and gentle is he,
tricks he will do when children appear,
and how they laugh when he’s near!
Unless they?re underwater child terrorists, secretly trying to blow up US warships, in which case they won?t be laughing when Flipper, trained military killer, suddenly appears. Especially because it?s quite hard to laugh underwater without accidentally drowning. But I expect the baddies warn the kids about that.
If you haven’t clicked the link yet, it’s a news article about US military trained dolphins that have been missing since the hurricane. They’re believed to be at large and may be armed and dangerous. Go on, read the article if you don’t believe me.
I imagine it’s not easy being a dolphin. You’re super smart, you want to work, but there’s limited choices. Dolphin career day probably just had a couple of booths.
‘Hey there sonny, come and work at Sea World. We’ll give you unlimited fish and lots of kiddie ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ in return for you doing a few tricks. You know, swimming on your back, making a smiley face, letting us brush your teeth with a comedy toothbrush. Oh and if you could jump through a few hoops that’d be cool. No, no travel opportunities really – you’ll just be living in a big swimming pool for the rest of your days. But hey, think of the prestige. I mean dude, it’s Sea World’
or
‘Don’t settle for Sea World when you can See the World! Join the US Navy. Learn to take surveillance photos, detect underwater mines, patrol warships and here’s the cool part, kill evil doers. That’s right, we’ll strap a torpedo to your body and you’ll use your crafty sonar to find them and blow them up. They’ll never guess it was you.’
It is worrying that these dolphins have disappeared. What if they’re being held captive, will we have to send in the Navy Seals to rescue them? And what if they just lark about instead? Imagine if the dolphins are reprogrammed by the Soviets and returned to live among us, divulging national secrets and transmitting surveillance photos of fat sweaty tourists pointing at them and whistling and throwing pieces of bread. I know, we don’t have to worry about the Soviets anymore, but no-one’s got the heart to tell the dolphins that the Cold War is over. Plus, if they knew the truth about the Iraq war they’d become disillusioned and possibly pacifists.
My further research shows that the US Navy also tried using Californian sea lions in its ops but this didn’t work out so well. Instead of taking equipment to divers, they would balance it on their nose and toss it into the air. Plus, all the barking gave away their position to the enemy and all the sea lions wanted to do with the terrorists was swim and dive with them for hours, followed by a long snooze on the beach.
Beluga whales were also sent on a couple of missions until President Reagan reminded them that beluga’s are ruskies and couldn’t be trusted.
I’m sorry. This piece had a semi-promising start, but then it took a bottle-nose dive. Ho ho.