Cetaceans and the City: Dapper Dolphins and Human Hotties

Imagine this:

You have Magic Powers.

And instead of being celebrated, you are being vilified.

By whom, you ask?

The WWF.

static.politico.com
Free world, world wrestling, free world, world wrestling…ah shucks, do ’em both!

(That’s World Wildlife Federation, not to be confused with the former World Wrestling Federation, which is now the WWE)

1200px-WWF_logo.svg
Please Do Not Wrestle the Wildlife

But first, did I mention that you’re also a dolphin who lives in the Amazon?

Pink / Amazon river dolphin, Brazil
Yes, this is you

*

This is what the WWF has to say about you, per their website:

  • 1. It’s bad luck to kill an Amazon river dolphinand even worse luck to eat one. Many Indian tribes still consider them to be sacred creatures and thus bestow a great deal of reverence on them. Rain forest-dwelling shamans have been known to learn medicinal techniques from the dolphins.
  • 2. Don’t ever make eye contact with a boto. If you do, you’ll have the most dreadful nightmares for the rest of your life.
  • 3. If you wish to find a rare Amazonian manatee, you must first locate an Amazon river dolphin and make peace with it. The dolphin is considered the manatee’s guardian
  • 4. Someone swimming alone in the river could be whisked away by a shape-shifting dolphin to a magical underwater city called Encante. They’ll live out the rest of their lives there, never to return to land again.  Perhaps this myth started as a way to get people, particularly youngsters, to be careful when swimming. The dolphins, after all, can bite—as can the piranhas that patrol the Amazon and its tributaries.
  • 5. During the day, river dolphins conduct their usual dolphin business. But once the sun goes down, they morph into handsome young men dressed in all white. They come ashore, strictly for the purpose of seducing the wives and young girls of local villages and impregnate them. Before the sun comes up, these shape-shifting encantados turn back into dolphins.

Let’s go back to point 5:

Boto dolphins:

come ashore, strictly for the purpose of seducing the wives and young girls of local villages and impregnate them. Before the sun comes up, these shape-shifting encantados turn back into dolphins.

To quote nature writer Sy Montgomery, describing the cousin of a local man she interviewed,

“A boto had come to her one night, disguised as her husband, but her husband was away fishing. They made love as if in a dream. Nine months later, she gave birth to the baby.”

*

So lets sum up the Encantados’, or the Enchanteds’, attributes:

  • superior musical ability
  • seductiveness
  • love of sex that often results in illegitimate children
  • attracted to parties
  • come out at night
  • dress to kill

Rock’n’Roll Dolphins?

*

So why do Encantados entangle with humans?

The Amazonians believe their home world, Encante, is a utopia full of abundance and without pain or death, so why do the encantados seek the pleasures and hardships of human beings; what do these sneaky were-dolphins want?

The answer, dear readers, is simple:

They’ve come for our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters.

Aquatic Nephilim? (not going there in this post)

Rock’n’Roll Dolphins.

*

So, how do you spot one?

They always wear a hat…

Why, you ask?

To cover their blowholes, which apparently don’t disappear when they transform…

So, if you see a dapper looking, hat sporting, were-dolphin, should you confront him?

No:

*

Here’s a list of other magical Encantado powers:

  • controlling storms
  • hypnotizing humans into doing their will
  • transforming humans into encantados
  • inflicting illness, insanity, and even death.

So, should you confront him?

No. Just let the Dolphin party…

And lock all of your bedroom doors…

*

Sy Montgomery describes the Encantado in her book,  Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009)

 

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s