Here at  TheExplodingWhale.com , part of our mission is to keep the whale in Christmas. With that in mind, we’d like to point out a couple of whale-related children’s holiday books:  The Christmas Whale  by Roger Duvoisin and  The Boy and the Whale  by Eric Metaxas.

An  article in the  The Daily Telegraph  newspaper of Sydney, Australia discusses plans to bury the carcass of a pygmy blue whale that recently washed up on an island near Perth. Because the island is a popular recreation and tourist area, officials decided to bury the carcass rather than tow it out to sea and risk attracting sharks to the area. However, there was one potential problem cited (emphasis ours): [Officials] said  if the whale exploded  because of a build up of gasses in the stomach the burial could take longer than the three days allocated. Oil from the dead whale already on the beach would take up to two to three months to disperse, but  if it did explode  more oil would be released and more sharks attracted, the authority said. You can read the short article here:  Dead whale to be buried  (or read quoted version below). And for additional information about putrefaction-related whale explosions, take a look at our  Taxonomy of Cetacean Detonation . Dead whale to be burie

Here’s a strange little story. A 17-year old boy in El Monte, California, rigged several ink pens to explode when the cap was removed. He then left the booby-trapped writing instruments around area high schools hoping to injure anyone who picked them up. His diabolical plot met with success on three occasions dating back to late August. Stumped detectives finally broke the case in early December after being contacted by an anonymous informant. Here are a couple articles:  Police Baffled by Booby-Trapped Pens Pen Explosions Suspect Arraignment Scheduled Interestingly, one can find similar (albeit less destructive) items at almost any magic or gag gift store! So, he doesn’t even get any points for creativity! Maybe next we’ll hear about some kid who is trying to electrocute people with a hand buzzer hooked up to a car battery.

I have not got my paws on a copy yet, but  Register-Guard   columnist  (and author, speaker, and teacher) Bob Welch — ardent fan of the Exploding Whale and whose  columns have made regular mention of it  — has a new book out called  My Oregon . Here’s Bob’s description: A collection of 100-plus Register-Guard columns written from 1999 through last August. Sections on what makes Oregon Oregon, seasons, sports, coast, heroes, losses, personal and adventure, including, of course, the three-part elk-hunting series in which I was bucked off a tame horse named Rusty. And I have it on good authority that our favorite Exploding Whale is covered. But of course! For the time being, the book is only available via  Bob’s website  or in a few local/regional bookstores (see list on Bob’s site).