and speaking of surviving

This post originally had a different title: kayaking... or hell, where did that orca come from

Many thanks to The Adventurist for finding the following absolutely priceless video.





You have to wonder what the three kayakers were doing out there in water deep enough for orcas to be throwing themselves about. And why were they being filmed, anyway?

I can't help but be skeptical about the veracity of this video. With the editing technology available to anyone with a computer, a video can be produced of any event with professionally realistic results, however unlikely. Like the April fool's day video of flying penguins that the BBC ran to promote their new iplayer (which, can I just interject here, has the fabulous tag-line "making the unmissable, unmissable." How great is that?) Anyway, if you missed the video, go watch it here because it's great.

If you don't have time to watch it, or you just prefer my inimitable prose, the video is a David Attenborough-style presentation of a newly-discovered species of penguin that can fly. It's a lovely piece of film and the penguins are so beautiful that you so want it to be real. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe! The video did manage to fool a few people, and I was tempted by it until it got to the bit where the penguins fly south for the winter and into the tropical jungle while bemused toucans look on. I guess there was a big clue in the fact that the presenter was Terry Jones of the legendary Monty Python team.

But back to the orca. There are so many things I love about the video. Here are these creatures swimming around the people in a sociable kind of way and then one leaps up to participate in the fun. By accident or design - either way it's astonishingly precise aim - the kayak is not directly hit, but just dragged under with the force of the orca's impact. If it had been hit, the guy would surely have been killed. But, no, he's just being involved in a game. And isn't it great the way he disappears for a few seconds and then bobs back up to the surface like a corked bottle. He quite literally must not have known what hit him.

But can you imagine how his companions were feeling? I'd like to have been one of them.

So, video footage of a real event or fabricated? I think real. Perhaps the setup was staged, like for a tv show, for example. You know, 3 intrepid kayakers go off with a camera following their every move into waters known to be full of playful orcas. Roll film and just see what happens. Or maybe it was filmed in a water park where the organisers knew exactly what would happen. If anyone knows how this film came about, please come find my blog and let me know. You may call me an idealist, or naive, or a sucker, but to be honest I don't really care how it was made, I love it anyway.

And here's a PS to those pesky Brits who insist on calling kayaks canoes - they're kayaks. What you call a 'Canadian canoe'? That's just a canoe.