From the Doolin old pier I could only see about a meter of slipway, which wasn’t too inviting. Should I go through the lengthy proces of getting into my suit, only to stare into half a meter of grey-green invisibility?
While I was weighing my options I heard a familiar sigh, Dusty was right under me.
‘Hey Jan, long time no swim?’
‘Nono, I’ve been in, but if you do the switcheroo to Doolin when my gear is at Inisheer, I can’t keep up running after you, but now that I lugged everything back, the water here is so yucky-murky. Why don’t you get yourself over to the island’s clean water, what keeps you here in this noisy oil soup?’
‘Well, you know, here I get at least a little attention. Lots of people on the pier and the occasional feel I can cop. I miss you guys, my long time friends, why aren’t you here?’
‘You know where to find us, we’re at the opposing rocks, halfway the Donkey’.
‘You mean next to the lace weed forest. That place is a maze, I once got caught in there at low tide, still gives me nightmares.’
‘Oh come on now, that’s a lame excuse, we don’t go there either and there’s plenty of space towards the Donkey.’
‘OK, look here, let me level with you, you people are always together or so it seems to me. I’m always alone.’
‘But don’t you get regular visits from other dolphins?’
’That’s how it seems to you. They actually come to hunt me, to be mean to me, to hurt me. That’s why I come to people, it’s my only way for protection, because there they dare not pursue me.’
‘Poor you, is that why you come to us?’
‘Basically yes, but youse got to be my friends too and I like to be with you, so why don’t you meet me at the pier, like you used too?
‘To be honest, you have been knocking people into hospital there.’
‘I don’t think you understand my dilemma. I need you people for protection, but some of you have been scary to me too. I used to take that for granted, you know that.’
‘Yes, I remember at White Strand you sometimes went through a flock of children, all trying to caress you and everybody having loads of fun. The happy chatter of the kids is still ringing…’
‘Yeayeah, but there were others that threw rocks at me, cheering when they hit me, and people jumping on top of my, trying to get hold of my dorsal fin, people that harassed me with jetskis, you don’t know the half of it.’
‘Yes, I realise that, but…’
‘You know Jan, there’s only so much a dolphin can take. After years of adoration and abuse I snapped, I got so sick of unwanted attention. I figured since you choose me, I can choose you, or not.’
‘Yes, I can imagine, but…’
‘I decided to draw a line, to trust those who trust me and kick all the others, that stand there, waist deep in the water, half crazy about me, half scared from the waist up. I feel they don’t trust me, I feel they want me to be what I’m not, I feel their fear and that used to scare me, but now it annoys me. Yes, I changed my attitude, I went from unconditional trust to asserting myself.’
’That sounds a lot like the emancipation process that woman go through in the human world.’
‘May be, but they have each other, I am on my own, I have to help myself. Let me put it this way, meet me at the pier and I decide who I want to swim with and who I chase out.’
’Sorry honey, but you don’t know the human world, you see, if you hurt people they blame us, your friends, for, by our presence, suggesting it’s OK to swim with you. And, what’s way worse, they blame you to be there at all. And then they don’t want you at the pier and they will try to make you go away and some even advertise that the only friendly dolphin is a dead one.’
‘I see, anger begets anger, until it spirals out of control. And so you weave your human fabric as a net around me, some sort of perfect logic that I must live by. But can you control the eegits that are always a threat beyond the horizon? Sorry Jan, but I know my friends can’t always be there to protect me, so I have no choice than to do that myself. And I am past ‘wait and see’. I will keep on doing my pre-emptive strikes.’
‘All right Dusty, I can see your point. Why don’t I put our chat on Facebook, just to knock some sense into people, like before you knock them out of the water?’
‘You have my blessing, Jan. Now just come in and cuddle me.’
‘OK, Dusty, catch you out there, past the lace weed forest.’
’Not if I catch you first!’