Salty Tears of a Silent Mourning

A whale lost its friend and trainer, a trainer lost her life, heartbreaking and terrible to lookers-on, grieving coworkers and family.

The public outcry seems to be categorized to jeers of 'served her right,' and 'free captive animals,' and 'cruelty to animals.'

PETA gets the stage, despite their middle names of "Ethical Treatment" when: average-Joe out-criers probably don't have icthyologists on retainer to look-in on their home aquariums or zoologists checking their gerbils or herpetologists giving in-home iguana physicals; when 47 cats are discovered in a feces-covered house from a do-gooder saving felines from euthanasia for lack of adopting families; where lifelong consequences reverberate from parents whose priorities put pet care above that of child rearing and discipline in healthy, structured environs; complainers driving polluting hunks-o'-junk held together with bumper stickers often decrying PETA sentiments.

It's the same PETA who demonstrates and pickets rodeos, ignorant of the fact that rodeo animals (like SeaWorld's aquatic stars) are higher valued than their equals, with special diets and dedicated medical staffs and labs to ensure their best health, both physical and psychological.

I hope I'm not a PETA target for my mixed-breed Chihuahua because she knows about four 'tricks' and responds to a dozen or so commands to include 'singing' along when I burst into a certain song or howl at passing sirens to encourage her harmonies.

A whale lost it's friend and trainer and a trainer lost her life...a mammal that may well have been slaughtered long ago by countries who hunt them...a whale who couldn't give a shit about PETA during this majestic creature's own time and expression of mourning...a kind soul, perished and gone, who would probably have forgiven without need of understanding.