Here we go again, Pagoda, and this one promises to be a whopper! Imagine if you can, a walking whale - weighing more than thirty elephants, towering more titanic than the largest dinosaur - leading a parade of twenty-three animals. No, she WAS the parade: an enormous float and upon her we all sat and rode while she walked and talked.

The swan sat majestically on the blue whale's head looking for all the world like an ornament of pearl. The hummingbird and swallow flitted around her flippers while the tern picked barnacles off the whale's broad back. The polar bear prowled round and round the blowholes hoping for a cooling shower. The frog and duck, the turtle and toad, sought moisture too. All four lodged themselves around the whale's mouth waiting for squirts of filtered water.

The bison ranged the plane - the entire length of the whales dorsal plane. On his migrations up and down, the startled buffalo ran into the moose and caribou patrolling a circular beat.

The salmon was sulking and could not be found, nor could I make out where the moth and butterfly had pitched their tents. Why, I was at the whale's mouth drinking in her every word. Her tail was a long ways away from where I sat - one hundred feet! But I think I saw the snake winding around the whale's flukes. The bat was clinging, upside down, to the baleen's belly. The spider was weaving a web across the whale's left eye. But that's okay because she can't see worth a darn anyway. But oh how she could talk! In fact, I gotta get ready to take down her words. The whale is angry and wants to speak. So long, Pagoda, for now...

Our school has shrunk! Time was when 300,000 blue whales attended class in the world's vast seas. Now if you look hard you might find THREE PERCENT of that number. What of the others - are they playing hooky? No, they do not play with hooks, they hang on hooks! They are dragged to their death on hooks, their flesh torn to pieces by hooks!

Who has done this to us? That same damned predator of which the bison and the serpent spoke! That repellent, repulsive... That depraved, detestable - that vicious beast of land and water! That...

But let him slip for now. Let us drown him in the waters of oblivion. I have a MERRY tale!