One Whale of Gratitude

A touching e-mail forward I recieved from a dear friend. My feelings as of late is that we are not alone. Humanity has made a grevious assumption that we are alone as the intelligent beings of this planet. I think we are learning that intellegence has much less to do with accumulating and more to do with appreciation.

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If you read the front page story of the SF Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat.
She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help.

Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to divein and untangle her -- a very dangerous proposition.

One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives
and eventually freed her.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles.

She then came back to each and every diver,one at a time, and nudged them, pushed gentlyaround-she thanked them.

Some said it was the most incredibly
beautiful experience of their lives.

The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth
says her eye was following him the whole
time,and he will never be the same.


May you, and all those you love,
be so blessed and fortunate----
to be surrounded by people
who will help you get untangled
from the things that are binding you.

And, may you always know the joy of
giving and receiving gratitude.