01/24/2006: "An Email Worth Reading"

If you're reading this, you're obviously on the web, and it is also safe to say you receive lots of unsolicited emails, many of which are -at best- worthless to your interests, and false in content. But once in awhile there can be a gem shining in the mud, and we recently received one, checked it out with TruthorFiction.com for confirmation, and found it to be considered true. We feel it would be a shame if our readers missed it, or having read it dismissed it as false, so we have decided to pass it on -just in case you are unaware of it- in the form in which we received it. It is reprinted below:

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"From: (removed)
To: Editor@islandguardian.com
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 4:28 PM
Subject: Great whale story....

If you read the front page story of the SF Chronicle Thursday, 15 Dec 2005 -- you would have read about a mature, female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by many hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle ceaselessly just to stay afloat. She had hundreds of yards of line (rope) wrapped around her body - her tail, her torso, and a hefty nylon line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off that the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her - a very dangerous proposition -- as a single slap of the tail could kill a few rescuers. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushing them gently around. Some of the divers say it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was following him the whole time, and that he will never be the same."
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