When dolphins go too far
At the recent AGM of the Mammalian Resistance Council the chairmanship passed alphabetically from Brother Lemur to Brother Leopard. On accepting the gavel, Chairman Leopard thanked Brother Lemur but said his own administration would be rather less Madagascar-centric.
“For the global situation is dire,” he declared. “The enemy continues to multiply and to annex territory. We are as divided along species lines as we have ever been. Several of our members openly fraternise with the oppressor (and here the chairman looked meaningfully at the kennel in the corner but the occupant was asleep). Yet there remain some of us that value autonomy and I invite delegates to report on successful acts of resistance with a view to informing global policy.”
Up went a trotter. “Brother Pig, the floor is yours.”
“I wish to draw the council’s attention,” said the pig, “to the urban guerrilla work being done by packs of Italian wild boar.” To general delight and cries of “at ‘em, piggies”, the delegate showed a video of a woman in a supermarket car park near Verona being pursued by a family of wild boar until she screamed, dropped her groceries and ran. Cheers erupted as the lead boar made off with a glazed ham.
“An example to us all,“purred Chairman Leopard.
“Guerrilla warfare is all well and good,” said Brother Rabbit, “if you have tusks and a snout that only a mother could love” – here, the whole room sensed the Pig bristle - “but rather less well and good if you are small, furry and herbivorous.”
“Have courage,” exclaimed Brother Sea Otter, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“The delegate will rephrase that,” said Chairman Leopard.
“There are weapons other than intimidation,” said the sea otter. “Such as cute. We sea otters have mastered cute in recent years, cosying up to wildlife photographers, rolling onto our backs to cradle pups and so on. This brought us protected status, which we’re now exploiting.” He screened a video of an otter gnawing at a paddleboard until its owner took fright and dived off, whereupon the otter slithered aboard in sole possession. “Cute, see, it works.”
“Lacking both tusks and cute,” squeaked Brother Rat, “our membership has made use of revulsion. Building on centuries of dedicated work with bubonic plague, our New Zealand branch has launched a campaign of intermittent supermarket visibility.” Brother Rat showed mobile phone footage of several members scurrying among the salads in the delicatessen counter of a Christchurch supermarket. “The effect has been dramatic. One supermarket was closed down entirely.”
The room broke into applause. “Excuse me,” said a tiny piping voice at the back of the hall, and a little flipper flapped for attention. “We stopped a yacht race.”
The silence was immediate.
“You did what?” said Chairman Leopard slowly, his voice thick with horror.
“It isn’t much, I know, and I apologise for even mentioning it, but we’ve been having a tough time of it down here and there are only a few of us left, thanks to pollution and what not, and when we’re not being drowned in fishing nets we’re being driven mad by sonar, and so last weekend we decided to stop half a billion dollars worth of yachts from racing and in the process enraged a vast television audience and various formidable commercial interests and…”
“You came knowingly between the enemy and his purposeless synthetic sport!”
“Yes,” said the little dolphin. “Um, sorry.”
“It's a bit late for sorry.” Drained face turned to drained face. Even the monkeys said nothing.
“Now we’re for it,” sighed Chairman Leopard. “I declare the meeting closed.”
And one by one, in silence, the mammals left the room.