Catching Idle Butterflies

Why a dolphin?

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Since I recently upgraded my membership to Premium, I decided to take advantage of using a permanent customicon. The moment I saw the dolphin I didn’t bother giving any of the others serious consideration.

Dolphins have been my favorite animals since I was eight years old. I remember the moment I fell in love with them low these many years ago:

Traveling across the country from Colorado to California to visit my grandmother, Mom, Margaret and I spent one day at Marine Land (Since bought out by Sea World). As we sat midway up the bleachers to await the next dolphin/killer whale show, a clean-cut young man (looking at him now with my aged inner eye) wearing a Marine Land polo shirt approached.

“How would you like to pet a dolphin?” he asked.

I glanced around at first wondering if he meant me. When I noticed no one behind me, I looked at my mom.

My mom asked him what the deal was.

“I’m going around the crowd looking for two kids to introduce them to Flipper. I already picked one, a little boy about five, and I thought you’d like to join him.”

Yes that Flipper ladies and gentlemen. The one and only time I met a television star.

Of course I wanted to leap at the poor guy in my enthusiasm, but I held still and stared speechless at my mom, the begging for her permission written all over my face.

The moment she nodded I followed the man and stood on a platform extended out into the huge pool.

One of the trainers dressed in a fancy wet-suit called Flipper over. More graceful than any dancer, she swam up and with a little jump, slid onto the platform right at our feet. The trainer then gave us permission to pet . . . her. Yep, Flipper was a girl.

As I reached down to touch this creature easily five times my size she said in this high squeaky voice, “HI!”

I grinned and touched her gray skin. It was nothing like I expected. First her skin wasn’t a solid gray, but streaky with different hues. It also wasn’t soft and smooth. It was . . . pardon the pun, and I’m sure partyof5dj is going to love this . . . groovy. It felt exactly like dragging my fingers over an old LP music album. She didn’t move as we touched her, but her eyes seemed to gleam with intelligence and humor and watched us as intently as we watched her. I’m sure that permanent grin most dolphins sport helped that joyful impression along.

The trainer also asked us to introduce ourselves to the crowd. The little boy went first (I used to remember his name), speaking into the microphone the trainer used to talk to the crowd. I went next. I hated speaking into microphones when I was younger. I did once in 1st grade in the lunch room, and heard for the first time just how high-pitched my voice was, nothing like what I heard in my own head. And to hear it in front of a crowd of thousands, echoing off everything, I spoke as fast as I could and handed the microphone back.

I turned back to the dolphin and watched her slide back into the water wishing I could pet her some more. We were then ushered out of the pool area and returned to our seats to watch the rest of the show.

I’ve been intrigued by dolphins ever since.

In response to a comment I made in his blog yesterday Ŧĥē Beŋ said, “Did you know that dolphins in Australia use sponges to protect their snouts while searching among coral?”

I did not know that! I searched for more info on dolphins yesterday, and in addition to that, the encyclopedia (www.wikipedia.org) said this about dolphins using sponges: The behavior has only been observed in this bay [Shark Bay, Western Australia], and is almost exclusively shown by females. This is the only known case of tool use in marine mammals. An elaborate study in 2005 showed that mothers most likely teach the behavior to their daughters.

But the weird thing is, dolphins didn’t come up either in his blog or in my comment. I had simply described writers a sponges, and he made the jump to dolphins. Perhaps it was my customicon that made him think of it?