Killing Keiko (16 page)

Having married only five months prior to arriving in Iceland, I was brimming with
anticipation at being reunited with my beautiful bride. But before I could depart
the island, I had to bring Robin
up to speed, covering all that transpired and my thoughts for Keiko in the progression
of his exercise program.

Upon Robin’s arrival, he and I spent our entire two-day overlap talking mostly about
staff roles and changes to the rotation schedules. Much of our time was dominated
with growing dissention within the ranks; specifically Jeff’s chosen few who routinely
maintained the same schedule as Jeff. Whether they were actively in Iceland or home
on their off-schedule, e-mails were flying, and Charles made us aware of the sentiments
being exchanged among the staff. He wanted the new additions to the release team to
succeed and took every opportunity he could to smooth out the wrinkles. By giving
Robin a “heads up” on the most glaring under-currents running afoul within the staff,
Charles hoped that Robin and I could selectively ease up on some of the more difficult
changes and thus lessen the complaints.

But it was not to be. No matter how hard we tried, there were those on staff that
wanted nothing to do with our management of the operation. Specifically, there were
those who believed we were pushing Keiko too hard. No amount of education on the science
of behavior or the finer points of the release plan changed some opinions. It was
a cancer within the ranks of the release team that would eventually have to be cut
out.

I returned to Iceland on my second rotation after only three short weeks at home.
It felt as if I’d never left. If there was any silver lining, it was that Alyssa and
I were trapped in the extended twilight of our honeymoon and each short rotation home
rekindled the excitement of our recent marriage.

I had only just started on the project in April and here it was already teetering
on the brink of July. It was full-on summer in Iceland. One unmistakable characteristic
of this far-north summer is that the sun never truly sets. By the middle of that next
month, direct sunlight kept us company twenty-three hours a day. There were only a
few minutes each evening where the sun momentarily dipped below the horizon, dimming
the otherwise eternal daylight. The never-ending day was operationally beneficial,
allowing us to make much progress in pursuing our goals with Keiko. By extending and
alternating our shifts on the bay pen, we could focus attention on Keiko’s behavior
around the clock.

It also meant the staff would not get much sleep. Evening festivities (late-night
drinking binges) routinely bled well into the next day, rendering the occasional team
member incapable of making early morning shifts on the bay pen. Looking back, I suspect
that some of the increase in extracurricular activity might have been avoidance of
Robin and me. We had taken all the comfort out of being on the bay pen. Being with
or around Keiko now required
thinking and work. The days of sitting on the pen dabbling on the computer or sleeping
off the previous night’s festivities were gone. During this period in the summer of
1999, many staff members became increasingly apathetic toward working with Keiko although
I did not see it this way at the time. I attributed the disinterest to a historically
lax work environment and a direct challenge to what Robin and I were implementing.
I suppose a little of each was true.

Though symptoms varied, at the heart of the matter was the simple human resistance
to change. A select few felt as if they had been pushed aside, their authority diminished
and their opinions worthless. That Robin or I maintained a constant presence on the
bay pen was perceived as distrust in the staff. In reality, close supervision was
necessary to ensure that the exacting requirements of Keiko’s program not suffer from
inexperienced application and, with some, the outright inability to comprehend various
elements of the rehabilitation process.

Behavioral conditioning requires consistency, which in turn requires patience. Like
many novice animal trainers, the lack of immediate results often led to open season
on suggesting changes in approach, many of which were based on an emotional need to
coddle Keiko. Try as I might, many attempts at explanation seemed wasted on unwilling
ears. The drawn-out effort to educate did little more than fuel my growing impatience.
I was hell-bent on investing our collective time in forward progress and the never-ending
need to validate every component of Keiko’s daily plan was exhausting. I often shared
these frustrations with Alyssa, who always talked me back from the brink of disaster.
She reminded me that lacking other means to contribute, the staff’s affection and
commitment to Keiko would materialize in other ways, ways that I was too quick to
accept as belligerent resistance.

Although I took her guidance to heart, isolating the person from the problem, the
merging of multiple tiers of incompetence surrounding the project would at times bury
me alive in trepidation. Nonetheless, had we been left to our own in Iceland it would
have been almost easy. Instead, Robin and I often spent as much time
educating the FWKF board through our interactions with Charles as we did rolling up
our sleeves and guiding the more important work with Keiko himself.

Within days of my return, a board member visited the operation. During a short spell
on the bay pen, the board member proceeded to “talk” to Keiko as if she were having
a conversation. At best it provided nothing more than novel material for short-lived
levity, until I learned the person believed that Keiko was a member of an Intergalactic
Cetacean Spaceship and that whales were here on earth to plea to humans for better
treatment of our world. Beyond the sinking feeling in my stomach, I became intimately
aware of how unrelenting the battle of continual education would persist throughout
the organization. This, of course, placed the challenges on-site in a new light and
if nothing else made them seem trivial by comparison.

Whether or not escape was a motivator, there were ample reasons for the staff’s allure
with experiencing nightlife in the small village. The town of Heimaey is a vastly
intriguing place in which to socialize and the cultural “aggressiveness” of the Icelandic
people is just too good to miss. I’m not talking about “fight-night” at the local
pub. By aggressiveness I mean that Icelandic men and women are very outgoing with
their social affections.

On one of my first forays into island nightlife, I was asked to dance by a local Icelandic
woman, repeatedly. It happened in the nearby watering hole, Lundinn. A pub half submerged
beneath a two- or three-story building, the quaint and somewhat rustic interior along
with the small floor space, imparted a very cozy atmosphere conducive to meeting new
people. An attractive woman sat across from me at one of the tables lining the dance
floor. She was in her early thirties and her blonde hair, blue eyes and thin figure
placed her right in the middle of the bell-curve of Icelandic women. Iceland has the
most beautiful people congregated in one land I’ve ever witnessed.

“You here with Keiko whale?” she said, making Keiko (cake-o) sound more like Keeko
(ceek-o). Icelandic accents are very similar to native German accents when speaking
English. The guttural pronunciations translated to hard consonants. She skipped the
occasional pronoun and applied unique interpretations of the softer vowels in English.

“Yes, I am,” I replied simply.

“You like Iceland?” she continued.

I could tell she had been drinking heavily, but her happy smile elicited the same
in me. I felt a little silly really. I knew she was flirting, but I wasn’t looking
for anything in that department. “I love it,” I said, trying hard not to encourage
her.

“We dance, yes?” But it wasn’t a question. She said it as she was grabbing my hand
and lifting herself from the chair.

“Oh no, thanks. I’m not a dancer. I’m just enjoying the music and watching my friends
there playing the slot machines,” I replied while resisting her pull on my arm.

She sat back down. “You’re new with Keiko, right?” she asked. Doubtful any locals
on the island did not know the project staff well by now.

“I started in April, but this is the first time I’ve been to Lundinn.”

Stephen Claussen had seen me talking to her from across the room. Standing by the
slot machines, he gave me a wink and a suggestive smile. Now I felt really silly.

“Come on, I show you good dance. You will like it,” she pushed. She never released
my hand.

“No really, I’m sorry but I’m just not into dancing.” This was going nowhere fast.

Before I knew it, she had pulled her blouse down just above the most private parts
of her breasts. “You don’t want to dance with me because my breasts not big enough.”

A rather innocent prude, I was shocked and let it show on my face all too easily.
She laughed. “No, of course not,” I shot back. “I’m a terrible dancer, I just don’t
like dancing. There’s nothing wrong with your breasts.”

At that, she feigned a small pout, touched my cheek with the back of her hand in a
caressing manner, smiled warmly and left the table. I felt like a schmuck, but a safe
schmuck.

Later that evening as the few of us from the project were leaving, we stood around
in a semicircle waiting for the last conversations to wrap up. The woman returned
and placed herself next to me and was holding my hand. She stood uncomfortably close,
leaning into me with her shoulder. On her right was a man I hadn’t seen before. She
was holding his hand also.

Walking out of Lundinn I shared, almost confessed, what had happened with our Icelandic
host (a coworker on the project) and asked him who the man had been. He informed me
that it was her husband. I couldn’t contain my incredulity. My first instinct was
to fear conflict with this unknown man over my interactions with his assertive wife.
Mercifully I was let off the hook pretty quick as everyone in our small group had
a good laugh and explained that this was normal behavior for Icelanders. They told
me not to worry, and that many Icelandic couples stray. In an almost nonchalant manner,
they described the ritual of many spouses walking back to their homes in the early
mornings following an adventurous night in another’s bed. This was hard to understand,
especially for a prudish newlywed. Although not a customary norm in Icelandic society,
I would learn that this practice was certainly not uncommon, at least not on Heimaey.

Nightlife in the small town was far from the only novel attraction that offered a
brief escape from the pressures of the project. Klettsvik Bay is a colossal bird sanctuary.
There, an unusual aerial display often commanded our attention. Among the many species
of birds that frequent the bay, one of the most memorable is the puffin. Small seafaring
birds, puffins almost looked phony, like plastic children’s toys. Their distinctive
black and white coloration appears as the avian version of a killer whale’s disruptive
camouflage. Puffin, or “lundi” in Icelandic, are black on their backs and
wings and white on their breast and underside. The two colors are divided perfectly
in clean lines, giving them a man-made appearance. Contrasting with the simplicity
of this design is a very colorful orange-white-black striated bill. They have larger
heads than appear proportional to their little bodies. The puffin’s eyes are framed
by black triangles that makes them seem “concerned” or “sympathetic.” In flight, they
are fast and hyper, legs trailing to the sides of their short butts and jerking to
and fro, making their way through the aerial mob over Klettsvik. During the spring
season, many of us took great pleasure watching lundi flying and diving throughout
the bay.

I loved watching the puffins landing on the water. They zoomed in, full of confidence
as if little airborne mavericks and just as they reached the surface on a long, low
trajectory, the feet went out like landing gear catching the water at high speed and
sending them tumbling across the surface. It was one of the funniest things I had
ever witnessed in the animal kingdom. Those hysterical landings never became commonplace.
We always stopped to watch the puffin’s signature “crash-and-burn” style landing.

Perhaps a less popular scene, but comical nonetheless when witnessed from afar was
puffin hunting. High up on the grassy tops of the Klettsvik cliffs, puffin hunters
would hide behind large rocks or unusually sizeable grassy knolls. Huntsmen used long
poles with hoop-nets on the end. We could never see the hunters, at least not until
they lurched up and netted the unsuspecting puffin right out of mid-flight. Viewed
from hundreds of feet below on the bay pen, it looked like an aerial version of “whack-a-mole.”

In August a fascinating event, aptly titled the “Puffin Patrol,” takes place on Heimaey.
Young puffin, called “lundi pysja” (LOON dih PIHS-yah) leave their nests, holes high
in the hilltops and cliffs surrounding the island. At night, the lights of the town
attract them, and they glide into the streets, yards and gardens of Heimaey by the
hundreds. Townspeople allow their children to stay out late in August to collect the
little lundi pysja into cardboard boxes, shoe boxes or anything that will suffice
for the short visit. Some
children might collect as many as ten or more young puffins in one night. The next
morning in the daylight, the children take their catch to the seashore where the puffins
are then thrown high into the air, gliding off toward the sea and back to their intended
destination. It is a very charming tradition to witness and one that deserves a place
on the bucket list.

E-mail: August 11, 1999