Killer Whale

            On Tuesday a woman who seemed like she might be on crack was crossing the street, looked up at my window and started mocking my guitar playing and singing, said something about “getting better” or “not getting better” and then proceeded to swear at people that didn’t have a cigarette for her.

            I saw two geese land in the Dollarama parking lot. That was a first in my 22 years of living here. They poked around for a few minutes between cars and in the open until a car moved towards them and they flew away.

            I practiced “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” three times.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride. I didn’t want to be as warm as I’d been the day before and so I eschewed my leather jacket. I almost regretted that decision as I headed out because my hoody didn’t seem to be enough. I remembered though that it is warmer on Bloor Street than it is by the lake and after I got going I was fine.

            I passed a cycle cop on the Bloor bike lane after calling out I was passing on his left. He politely moved to the right. I hardly ever see just one bike cop, as they tend to travel in pairs.

            A couple of guys passed me easily on Bloor. A woman passed me too but she was really working hard. She was bent forward and pumping those little legs like crazy. I passed her with no great effort but if I worked as hard as her I don’t think anyone would be able to pass me. It doesn’t sound like much fun though.

            I rode as far as Woodbine, stopped at the Firkin to pee and then headed home.

            The back of my undershirt was cold and wet from perspiration when I arrived.

            I weighed 90.3 kilos after my bike ride. It’s the first time I’ve seen it that high for over a month. I’d like it to be at 90 or below.

            I boiled a carrot and a potato and heated a chicken breast and some gravy for dinner. I watched two episodes of Sea Hunt.

            In the first story Mike is approached by the government asking him for help recovering the nosecone of an experimental ICBM that went down in the ocean. He is told to meet their agent on the pear the next day. A woman named Catherine approaches him about doing some underwater photography. He tells her he doesn’t have time. She tells him he might like some of her pictures and shows him her government identification. It turns out she is an expert diver and a judo expert. She has an instrument that looks like an underwater camera but it is a detector that will pick up the signals from the nosecone. They begin their search but they are being watched by three men pretending to be sport fishermen in a boat. After a few dives Catherine detects the signal of the nosecone and then Mike dives and finds it. But while he is raising a marker buoy the missile falls on him and pins him to the ocean floor. When Mike doesn’t surface Catherine dives to look for him. He signals that he needs a crowbar and so she surfaces to get one from the boat. One of the men is waiting for her but she judo throws him and knocks him out. She heads for the marker buoy and drops the crowbar down the line to Mike but it lands just out of his reach. Meanwhile it takes two men to capture Catherine. After several tries Mike manages to swing Catherine’s instrument by the neck strap and pulls the crowbar to him. With difficulty he gets himself free. On the way to the surface he sees the other boat and senses trouble. He removes his tank and ties it below the surface to the marker line and then swims to his boat. He gets his harpoon gun and forces the three men to throw away their oars and gas. Then he calls the authorities. He and Catherine recover the nosecone. 

            In the second story Mike is diving for abalone with two newlywed friends, Mela and Doug when they see a killer whale. Mike falsely describes killer whales as being known to kill humans for food, which is odd considering that Sea Hunt was filmed under the auspices of Marineland, which should know. But maybe in 1958 they didn’t. The three escape into a cave but are running out of air. When the whale swims away Mike leaves the cave to see if it’s safe. But a little later, worried about Mela running out of air, Doug tries to swim for the boat to get her a tank. The whale swallows him “in one gulp”. After Mela and Mike are safe on the boat and realize that Doug is probably dead, the rest of the story is about finding the whale and killing it in revenge. Mike figures it will go looking for seals on a certain island and so they set up a harpoon gun and kill it when it jumps.

            In most of the scenes it wasn’t even a killer whale they used. It wasn’t until 1964 that the first killer whale was captured for an aquarium and it was learned that killer whales prefer fish to warm blooded prey. There have been very few cases of killer whales deliberately killing humans. Interestingly the west coast tribes like the Haida never thought of killer whales as being vicious and considered them to be benefactors.

            Speaking of “vicious”, as I was getting ready for bed I heard shouting outside on Queen Street. I leaned out my window and saw three men in the street near the southwest corner of Dunn and Queen. It looked like one of the men was a bystander and that the confrontation was between a young man holding a belt and a much older man who looked down and out and not very healthy. Suddenly the younger man started swinging his belt at the older man and hitting him with the buckle as he howled and bent over in pain while backing away across the street. The man with the belt followed and kept swinging. I shouted, “Hey! What are you doing?” The man hesitated and looked up. He came towards the old man again in a threatening way. A young, tall and slim guy came walking from the east and called out, "I'll finish him off for ya!" but then as he got closer and saw the old man he said, "Never mind!" The man with the belt then turned and walked west. The old man sat down on the sidewalk to recover. Two cops showed up and they seemed to know the old man by name. He told them he was homeless and he had been sleeping in a doorway when the other guy came up and demanded to know what he was doing. It seems like the belt had been punishment for being homeless. The cops asked which way the guy had gone. The old man started walking east and I could see that he had not been in good shape in The first place. He walked bent over with a limp.