A while ago (maybe a couple months) we heard talk of a beached whale where we take our dogs to walk sometimes by the lighthouse. We didn't get out to see it until today June 28th 2008 since there have been alot of people around there as well as birds nesting so we haven't taken our dogs down there for awhile. Today however we decided to take them on lead for a walk so I could go get a few photos of the whale. It was a different type than the last one, here are photos. This one seemed alot more intact than the last one even though it had been laying there longer and this one hardly stank at all so I got right up to it without having to hold my breath. Hehehe

The 20th of July 2007 some neighbours discovered that a whale had been washed ashore. No one knew how long ago it happened but it had already started to stink and it was so sad that we didn't know when it happened, not that we could have done anything to save it but you always wish you could have.

I realized that Klói had been sniffing the air a few days earlier and also we couldn't figure out why so many seagulls and birds were flying around the neigbourhood. The sea is right across the street from us so we of course wanted to go take a look at the poor whale. The first photo shows how far away he was, we are standing on the hill across from our house, you can just see a few people standing way out on the rocks in the water right around the center of the photo. There was a guy sawing the jaws and harvesting the teeth, he'd been there all day doing that and was sweating and tired but the tide was coming in so he needed to hurry up. Unfortunately for the guy just as he walked up to his car the police arrived. They looked like they were trying to get him to surrender the teeth and jaw, another cruiser showed up shortly afterward but he finally got to leave with all the stuff he had worked so hard all day to recover. I guess they couldn't stop him since it is public property and he was the first one there and did all the work himself. Today the 21st of June the officials came to take some samples to try to figure out what happened to the poor thing. They believed that the whale has been dead for a few months.

Here is the part of the jaw the guy took with him. He also cut out all the teeth seperately from the other part of the jaw.

Here I am on the left side of the photo standing beside the poor dead whale.

Tonight June 28th they dragged the whale out to sea, I was told they would blow him up once he is in the ocean but I really don't know if that happened. Sounds nasty, I hope they don't have to do that. I do know though that the poor thing was starting to smell very bad, as they dragged it across the ground the smell kept magnifying. I walked over to the other side of our street with Klói to watch as they dragged it away, by the time we got there they had already moved it pretty far from where it first stranded. We decided to take a peek because all day there were alot of tourists watching and we thought well we can't have a whale in our "backyard" being moved without at least taking a peek at it. Rúnar took some photos!

The whale was dragged out as far as the machine could go and then covered with large rocks, many are not satisfied with that but let's hope he doesn't wash ashore again. A couple days later the birds were still swarming around the area, don't know how noticeable it is on the photo but there are so many birds we felt like we were in an Alfred Hitchcock movie!