Long Live the Killer Whale

Tony is on an Orca kick right now. When we were on vacation, we visited an ocean acquarium which had a display about Orcas; and two weeks ago, the area where my parents live was visited by a pod of Orcas, a rare but not unheard of event. I read the news story to Tony, and he was enthralled; especially since we had just been there a short time before.

Then in the past couple days, our local PBS station aired several stories about Orcas and other kinds of whales which interested Tony. I let him stay up to watch them, even though it was past his bed time.

The other day, Tony saw the episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood when Mr Rogers visited Namu and Shamu in a water park. That got Tony and I to talking about how intelligent these creatures are, and led me to tell him about Keiko (Willy) and the movie Free Willy. We are going to watch the movie today. I even printed out some Orca pictures off the Internet for Tony to put up in his room. I feel inundated by these fascinating black and white creatures. Boy, I sure wish I could been there to see the whales play in the waters of my parents' hometown!

(Later - 4:05PM) We just finished watching Free Willy, and Tony reacted as I expected; he watched part of it, ran from the more intense parts, and cried when "Willy" cried. I explained who "Willy" really was, and that for parts of the film, a mechanical whale was used and Keiko was safe in the tank. I also told Tony the real story of Keiko including his recent passing in December of 2003.

Talk about being inundated! When we finished Free Willy, I turned off the tape only to see that our local PBS station had a kids' program on and the story line took place at the acquarium, which housed, of course an Orca. Tony was delighted and eagerly watched the rest of the episode.

When we finally turned the TV off, he asked me, "Mommy when Prince dies, can we get a killer whale?"