When a magpie steals a penny from your driveway it is one thing, when a magpie drops a penny in your birdbath, it is not a magpie! It is rather the first step in this most phenomenal metamorphosis that the North Atlantic Killer Whale Wisher is about to undergo.

It begins when the bird has dropped the penny and whistles the wish to become the absolute antithesis of the way nature had created it. That is to say, that from a whiter than black wee airborne creature, it wishes to be a blacker than white gigantic underwater creature. It is Nature at its most paradoxical.

Does its wish come true? Indeed, it does. Just as most wishing well wishes are answered, so is the wishing Whale Wisher wish!

As the upper body of the small bird inflates exponentially and begins to resemble a glistening Orca emerging from the sea, it rises and swells like a weather balloon "en route " to the stratosphere. At this point in time, only an averted bird watcher could hear in the distance a magical whoosh followed by a thundering flatulence, The undisputed sign that the Whale Wisher has let the air out!

Stories abound of Unidentified Flying Objects hovering and suddenly darting into space , Legends of airborne whales, tales of the foul "wind" passed by a digesting dragon. Could all these be the Whale Wisher?

(R.B of N.A.: JF Podevin-1997)