Dolphins

I love dolphins. I've always loved dolphins, ever since I was really young. My teddy that I've had pretty much since I was born, and who I still sleep with today, is a dolphin.

I've been thinking about dolphins a lot lately. It's quite funny really. It's such a strange thing to be thinking deep sad thoughts about.

Dolphins man. Dolphins.

Did you know that the dolphin that played Flipper in that TV show killed herself? I think her actual name was Cathy, and she committed suicide because she didn't want to live in that concrete swimming pool by herself anymore. Isn't that just the saddest thing you've ever heard?

A beautiful, magnificent, fantastic, absolutely marvellous creature being so unhappy. A free soul locked up in a concrete water filled cage for our viewing pleasure.

It makes me feel sick. I hate it. I really do. Dolphins are supposed to be wild, and free, and happy, and beautiful. They're supposed to have the whole ocean to play and swim in. They are NOT meant to be in swimming pools jumping through hoops to the loud obnoxious yelling of humanity.

I was on facebook the other day and I saw a picture of a girl I had gone to school with, and who is actually in Florida for an internship. She was petting a dolphin. She was petting it, as if it were some pet. And I'll bet that she has no idea, or maybe she just doesn't care, about the fact that that beautiful dolphin would be so much happier free.

There's nothing more amazing to see than a wild dolphin. I should know I've seen one. I was very young. Maybe six, or seven and I couldn't swim without floaters. There was a wild lonely dolphin who lived along the coast. We don't know why she lived alone. But from time to time she'd come into the bay and play. And so we'd play in the water too, but we were always very careful to leave her alone. She came to us not the other way around, and my father was very blunt when he told us that she was to be left alone. "She is wild, she's not tame, she's not a toy, if you hurt her she will hurt you. Don't try and grab her, or touch her. Just watch, and swim a little distance away"

It was one of the  most wonderful things I ever did, and I never even came that close to her. A real, wild dolphin.

I saw a whole group once too. Swimming into the sunset. It looked like a painting, a painting of a perfect moment.

Dolphins are beautiful and they should be free. And the fact that some of them aren't makes me sad.