All Hail the Majestic Narwhal

A moose and a narwhal humping a crown, an igloo, and the newest part of Canada: Nunavut. This is their official Coat of Arms.

As requested by the Esq's auntie, the 'narwhals' blog will start in 3...2...1....

Most people think that narwhals are imaginary, but I'm here to tell you they are very weird and very real. The Esq has some type of freaky kinship with these monster cetaceans, which is highly annoying to this narwhal-fearing blogger. I'm very conservative when it comes to my sea creatures; the only ones I approve of come from Greek mythology (Argus is my favorite), the bare-breasted Starbucks mermaid, and the Kraken. The Kraken totally rocks.

When I was but a wee lass, we used to spend summers at our beach cabin on the Oregon Coast; it's still there, actually, although I don't get down there as often. I loved the kite-flying competitions, our bonfires on the beach, clam chowder outings, trips to the salt water taffy store, sleeping in sandy bunkbeds with my buddies, and whale-watching. What I liked was how carefree everything felt, and how limitless our daily fun could be; what I liked about whale-watching was the terror.

Whales are FRIGHTENING. They're like 900 feet long, weigh a billion pounds, and sing whale songs that please both Native Americans and affluent white hippies alike. From far away, whales are a graceful silhouette against the setting sun, a magical spray of water in the moonlight. Up close, though, the size of a whale is intimidating, especially when it's breaching twenty feet away from the unstable dinghy you paid real money to be a hostage in. People forget that whales are BAD ASS--do you know how much power it must take for a whale to breach? It takes me actual effort to go from sitting to standing, so I can only imagine the energy involved in getting a 150-ton mammal to leap out of the ocean, without pushing off of something (like another whale: whale leapfrog). Whales are also pretty hardcore, hosting thousands of barnacle colonies for life, and swimming so fast that biologists must use aircrafts to track them, because they're too fast for boats. Any time I've been whale-watching, it's cold and drizzly and anxious and thrilling; being just feet from an enormous breaching beast can really take your breath away.

Now imagine a whale like this meeting a third-world country unicorn in a seedy underwater bar; they do one too many whiskey shots and Baby Makes Three. That unwanted baby is a narwhal.

A narwhal looks like a Beluga whale with an unbelievably long unicorn horn. Narwhals are generally 13ft-16ft long, and the 'corn horn can get up to 10 feet in length; the coolest part about the horn is that it's a helix. And I guess to be fair, it's not really a horn, but a long incisor--it's a ruddy-looking toof! a jacked-up grill!--and as the Esq pointed out, the narwhal is like the Lil' Jon of the sea. He loves the narwhal because it's majestic and weird and unicorn-ish and ugly, which are the exact reasons I oppose its' existence. For those in the back who couldn't hear, the word 'majestic' should only be used for these three things: royalty, purple mountains, and the Disney film, Fantasia. Narwhals are an awkward underwater abomination, although I'm warming up to their weirdness--kind of like I have with David Lynch movies and people who wear really white shoes. They certainly are original, and give me hope for having children of my own someday--ones that have big unicorn horns sticking out of their foreheads. I was disappointed my own son didn't think to grow one in utero, but what can you do? Kids never listen.

Out of the seven people I talked with about this topic, six of them thought the narwhal was a mythical creature. Out of those six, four of them still thought I was pulling their leg even after I directed them to the Narwhal Wikipedia page. Out of those four, two of them still think I'm a big fat liar; out of those two, only one of them reads my blog. So to that one person out there: NEENER FUCKING NEENER. Just like David Blaine, the narwhal's magic is real and I believe in it. For more proof, check here.

[RADWORDS]: NARWHALS, WHALES, KIDS, UNICORNS, DAVID BLAINE.