The Unusual Tourist

There is a kind of whale called a ‘false killer whale.’ The naming seems to me highly unjust, implying as it does, that the whale is engaged in some attempt at deception. In fact, it is just a tropical waters whale that looks a lot like a killer whale. It lacks the distinctive white saddle, which is pretty much of a giveaway, I’d think, but perhaps the namers were distracted from that fact because they were observing from, say, underwater.

In any case, we have one of them, sort of. Apparently, they sometimes swim up this far in the summer, but then they go back when the chill begins. Our false orca (or killer whale, same thing), it is thought, swam up with her pod and then, for some reason, she became separated from them, they went south, and she (probably after seeing Point Roberts) decided to stay.

In this part of her run, she is known as Wilma, and I was lucky enough to cross her path some 5-6 years ago. Our neighbor’s son had recently moved over to one of the Gulf Islands and he sped over one sunny afternoon in his outboard motor boat and offered us a little ride.

Now I am not a fan of actually being either in or on the ocean unless I am wearing scuba gear. The reason for this is that I can’t swim, and the reason for that is I have some kind of strange malformation of the nasal passages that leads water to rush up into nose and down into my lungs the minute my head goes under water. I used to think it was that I had an unrestrainable compulsiosn to inhale when i put my head in the water but recently General Mike McConnell, the head of one of our vast Intelligence Organizations, reported in a discussion of waterboarding and why he didn’t want to have it happen to him (although okay to have it happen to others), that he had the same problem as I, and he said it was a malformation. So I’ll go with that as to the cause: I mean, he’s Mr. General Intelligence, so he should know what his water problem is.

So, the opportunity to go out in a little boat without my scuba gear didn’t immediately appeal, but it was a nice offer and I get weary of explaining to people that I don’t swim and I don’t like going to places where I might get the opportunity to be in water that is deeper than me, and the neighbors and Ed were all excited by it, so I shut my mouth and got into the boat. I believe I may have been the only person in the boat actually wearing a life jacket (why would this be? Is this not just rudimentary good sense? Well, I don’t know, they all can actually swim, are Olympic champions for all I know, so I am not a good judge of it, I supppose).

We got in the boat, we motored (Slap! Slap!) down past the Tswwaasen Ferry Terminal and eventually turned back. As we came by the terminal, Wilma (who until that moment I'd never heard of) caught our wake and begin to swim along side of us. She would suddenly surface (Right! No white saddle patch.) and then she’d disappear and the next thing she’d be on the other side of the boat, having gone underneath us. It was an amazing and terrifying experience for me: not so much simultaneously as in turns. I would see her and be amazed; she would disappear and I would be terrified as I imagined her misjudging exactly where she and we were. For about 15-20 minutes we had this back and forth and up and down, and then she bid us farewell as we got up to the entrance to the marina on Point Roberts.

There were other sightings of Wilma that summer and it was said that she hung around the ferry terminal to ride passing boats’ wakes. Just saying ‘Hi!’ to those of us who were traveling these waters with her. Just looking for a friend. Maybe she found one with a compass and went south because I haven’t heard about her being around over the last couple of years. The last sighting I found on the Net was in 2005. So maybe Wilma was just a tourist who decided not to stay. In my memory though, I see her all the time.