Killing Keiko (36 page)

Separating Keiko to the medical pool and lining the pool with our trapping net went
without a hitch. We immediately put Smari and Greg in the water in full dive gear.
They would keep the bottom of the net from billowing which otherwise gave Keiko an
easy out. The rest of us topside were charged with seining the net inch by inch until
we had it, and Keiko, fully retracted. So it went. Keiko was held in a lineup position,
parallel to the west side of the med pool along the surface. Robin, Jeff, Brian, Blair,
Tom and I began
crawling the net inward, heaving the sizable mesh and draping its excess onto the
deck at our feet. As his med pool halved in size, Keiko, long familiar with nets,
began a slow familiar dance with his old friend. He was not alarmed. He did not panic.
He merely took a preparative breath, then submerging, slinked straight to the bottom.
In doing so he was supremely calm, almost nonchalant.

On deck, those of us manhandling the net could feel we were on the losing end of a
tug-of-war taking place somewhere in the turbid depths of the medical pool. Imagining
what might be transpiring on the bottom, we were reluctant to put our backs into the
struggle. After all, we had two divers in the water. However, releasing the net would
only make a potential problem turn into a real emergency. Any slack afforded could
just as easily give cause to a mess of whale and divers entangled in a tightly wound
and unforgiving ball of tensioned havoc. In those scant few moments, the devastation
that would result if Keiko decided to thrash and spin within the trapping mesh played
like a nightmare unfolding in our minds. It seemed we were walking on the very edges
of our worst fears. At any moment the pall of uncertainty would emerge into a catastrophic
upwelling of white water, divers, net and whale.

Somehow fortune favored us that morning. More accurately, Keiko’s experience in avoiding
nets paid unexpected dividends for our group of wary stakeholders. By now, the opposite
topline of the encircling net had divided the medical pool in half; the worthless
excesses lumped at our feet on the west side of the deck. Shortly after the mysterious
goings-on at the bottom of the medical pool, Keiko emerged at the surface on the east
side, clearly free of our ingenious compass.

“What the heck?” I blurted.

“Can anyone see Smari?” Robin called out. Greg had come to the surface just moments
before, obviously the wiser.

“Greg, where’s Smari? Jeff repeated Robin’s concern.

“I can’t see anything down there. It’s so stirred up,” Greg replied.

As his words still hung in the air, Smari popped his head from the surface on the
south end of the medical pool, like Keiko, outside of the net. He looked both frustrated
and astonished.

“He got out,” Smari said, as if he were the first to know.

“How did he …?” I was stumped. The entrapping net was overly large, easily covering
the extents of the medical pool. We had carefully maneuvered the net completely enclosing
the entire pool, no corner left unanswered. I couldn’t imagine how Keiko got through.

“Smari, you and Greg go ahead and get out,” Robin urgently instructed.

We stood poolside, for the moment leaving the impotent catch net loosely waving in
the light chop.

“Let’s just get the net out before someone gets hurt. This isn’t going to work. He’s
too net-smart,” Jeff said.

At that, we pulled the useless net clear of the medical pool, piling it in a balled-up
line along the west deck. Keiko floated on the far side making no attempt to solicit
our attention. It felt almost as if he had gone to his corner, awaiting round two.
Smari came over the bridge and approached the brain trust leaning forward as he walked.
He was still wearing his full dive gear.

“Holy crap, man!” he said, his Icelandic pronunciation making “man” sound overly innocent.
Gesturing out a very small circle with his hand, he continued. “He found a tiny gap
at the edge and pushed the net and lifted it up. I tried to keep him back. I was pushing
on his nose and trying to keep the net down, but, man, he just came through.”

Smari was competitive. He didn’t like being the guy that let the whale get away. The
outlines of his dive mask on his face and reddened eyes lent to his frustrated appearance.
“I can’t believe he could get his body through that tiny hole,” he said, as much sheepish
as exasperated.

“Ohmygosh, dude, you’re nuts! You can’t beat a whale.” I found the prospect humorous,
but only because we were safely clear of the potential mess. Smari’s one-on-one battle
with Keiko only evidenced his inexperience. We were very lucky. Once gone that far,
it was fruitless to attempt to forestall Keiko’s escape, and the effort to do so was
gracefully excused by the all-too forgiving whale. Any other animal, and we might
be cutting a dead body from the net right then, human, whale or both.

“Why don’t we just ask him to hold voluntarily?” Jeff proposed. “He’s been pretty
good with letting us work on him in the past.”

As always, with a tone of optimism, Jeff offered the path of least resistance. Admittedly,
Robin and I had been proponents of netting Keiko for the procedure, but then again,
Keiko was no ordinary whale. His passive acceptance of what would piss off an otherwise
normal whale lent to our initial misdirection.

“It’s about the only option we have. There’s no way we’re going to get him in the
net after that. He beat us, and he knows it,” I replied. “He pulled that move like
a pro.”

So it was, we would simply ask Keiko to line up at the surface, hold him in position
and allow the doc to do what he needed. A short while later, having allowed the atmosphere
to settle, I stepped up to the medical pool and asked Keiko over. All seemed well
enough. We lined him up alongside the HDPE pipe of the west medical pool. Here, Tom
and Tracy took position at Keiko’s head. They would keep his focus and periodically
reinforce him for staying in position. Brian and I moved down to his dorsal. The massive
girth of his body required that we pull him inward, anchoring his midsection as close
to the pool edge as possible. This enabled Lanny to reach Keiko’s dorsal fin from
poolside. Hunched over, our knees pressing into the Chemgrate decking, Brian took
the leading edge and I the trailing edge of Keiko’s dorsal. Lanny squeezed between
us, sitting comfortably on the deck with his boots resting on the HDPE pipe.

First, he injected Keiko’s fin with a numbing agent, likely carbocaine. This took
some time. Injecting solution into the very dense tough tissue required no small amount
of hand strength. The grip required to keep Keiko’s dorsal fin where we needed it
was already cramping both my hands. Lanny applied the local anesthetic on the two
sides in a scattered pattern surrounding the
three areas to be drilled. Normally, five or more minutes is needed to allow the numbing
agent to fully take effect. By the time Lanny finished the last of his shots, already
ten minutes had passed since the first. He asked for the template and the drill and
went straight to work.

Earlier Jeff had gotten in the water, propping himself on the outside of Keiko, in
line with Lanny, the dorsal fin between them. He supported himself on Keiko’s back,
his left arm hooked onto the front edge of the whale’s dorsal fin. Submerged to his
chest, the air in his splash suit was forced to the top like a half-empty and rolled-up
tube of toothpaste. He looked uncomfortable and not a little ridiculous. Jeff would
help keep the template in place and guide Lanny on navigating the drill’s alignment
straight through the dorsal. It was important that the hole match on both sides.

Robin stood just behind Lanny preparing the drill, which was equipped with an expensive
diamond-edge bit, though nothing different than what can be purchased at The Home
Depot. After sterilizing the bit Robin handed the drill to Lanny. The infamous doctor
did not hesitate. His approach was shocking … I had taken more precaution when building
a deck on my house the previous summer. The razor-sharp bit dove right through the
outer skin layer with no noticeable effect on Keiko, who sat almost motionless. As
Lanny got into the heavier cartilage, the progress slowed, but there was no grinding
sound, nothing grotesque about it. It appeared and sounded like drilling through wet
balsa wood. Within seconds Lanny had completely perforated two and a half inches of
Keiko’s dorsal. The first hole was the more forward of the three attachment points.
But Lanny had missed the mark. The path of the drilled hole did not exit in line with
the intended target on the other side. He was off by more than a centimeter. By then
the tiny vessels within the connective tissue had begun to bleed. Crimson red flowed
steadily from the gaping hole, down Keiko’s dorsal and into the water. Diluted and
spreading within the water column, the watery red cloud appeared as if it were a cheap
special effect in a third-rate horror film.

Lanny moved the template higher and remarked the same pin location. Without a word
he began drilling again. Though we all shared the same inward trepidations, no one
questioned Lanny’s quickness to pierce yet another hole in Keiko’s dorsal fin. For
the most part, we all expected that the veterinarian, of all people, would naturally
espouse more exacting restraint than the average Joe. After completing the second
hole, again missing the alignment, Lanny began boring out the same in an attempt to
fix the erroneous path. At this Keiko’s patience began to dissipate. Whether he was
feeling pain or just curious, it was impossible to know, but it was abundantly clear
he wasn’t going to hold his position much longer. I was relieved. Lanny’s come-what-may
approach to the task cast an air of astonishment and disgust among those of us watching
the crass process in which he callously drilled and drilled again.

Of his own volition, Keiko dropped his body submerging his dorsal and turned, sitting
more upright in the water and directly in front of Lanny, who remained in the same
sitting position at poolside. I stood and looked at Tom and Tracy, who had nothing
more to offer than an impotent shrug. They had done all they could do to keep Keiko
lined up, but he had reached the limit of his patience regardless. Still uncertain
and more than a little perturbed at Lanny’s handling of the “surgery,” none of us
was quick to offer direction. Amidst our pensive hesitations, Lanny reached back into
one of Keiko’s buckets and tossed a single herring into the whale’s mouth.

“We need to break,” I was instantly pissed. “We need to break
Now
!”

“What do you want to do?” Lanny asked.

“I don’t care, but you need to step away from the pool right now. We need to clear
the area.” I stepped back, trying to draw the entourage surrounding Keiko with me.

The entirety of the last twenty minutes coursed through me at once. I hadn’t made
any attempt to stop it. I was angry with myself. I was vexed by Lanny’s cavalier approach
to what should have been a precise and calculated procedure. To make matters worse,
he
had just reinforced Keiko after Keiko had prematurely ended the session of his own
accord, an incorrect behavior to be sure. That was not the only offense. Lanny was
no one that needed to be associated with primary reinforcement and further, gave no
heed to the behavioral regimens and principles we had worked on for over a year. The
doctor acted innocent at the gesture, but he knew exactly what he was doing. It was
a passive-aggressive affront toward everything I represented.

“He’s sitting calmly,” Lanny insisted, as if to justify the slight.

I ignored it, looking instead at Robin, who knew I was about to explode.

“Let’s get everybody in the research shack, away from the pool and out of sight from
Keiko,” Robin intervened.

As everyone moved inside, Robin and I stepped around the south end of the research
shack. He knew I was aggravated and swiftly created a diversion by requesting my input
on the next steps. “What do you want to do?”

“I can’t believe that shit.” I wasn’t ready to answer yet, I just wanted to vent.
“We can’t do that again, and if he touches another bucket I’m going to put it over
his head.”

“He won’t and I won’t let him,” Robin assured me, his tone was casual.

“What about drilling willy-nilly … like he has no idea what he’s doing?”

“Jeff and I will talk about it. I’ll suggest that Jeff finish.”

“Well, we’ve already made a mockery of this entire situation. We need to step back
up with minimal people, who know what the hell they’re doing and keep this short.
Even if that means doing it five more times,” I said.

“Let’s get inside and talk about it with Charles, Jeff and Lanny,” said Robin.

Back inside, the mass of bodies shifted uncomfortably about the confines of the research
shack, which was not intended for a group of this size. All of a sudden it was hot.
Coming from outside and in full gear to a heated and overpopulated trailer made me
directly aware of the bulky splash suit. I felt like a kid in six layers of snow gear
that hadn’t even left the house yet. My lingering angst contributed to the discomfort
in no small part. In the close quarters of the shack, Lanny started in, poking the
bear.

“Every project like this needs at least one genius and one asshole.” Lanny said smugly.

He knew I would be easy to unravel. I welcomed the liberty. “Good, then you can be
the asshole.” After the briefest pause, I finished the assignments. “I’ll be the genius.”
I turned facing Lanny as I made the comment, pulling the tight rubber seal of the
splash suit away from my neck in the process.

Like a seasoned referee, Jeff interrupted the exchange offering an alternative. “I
think I can get it. I think I can get a better angle from the water.” It seemed obvious
that he and Robin had somehow already conversed on the topic. That, or Jeff was thinking
along the same lines as Robin.

He continued, “It’s hard to get the angle right from where Lanny is, but I can get
a much better view from where I’m at. I think we can make it work. I just might need
Brian or someone to hold me up when I’m working the drill.”