The Spy Whale Knows Too Much

If you are a person who looks at things from time to time on the internet, you may have found yourself charmed by a recent viral animal. This time it’s a beluga, which is practically a narwhal, which is practically a unicorn. I get why you love it. It seems to possess the whimsy and sweetness of a Lucky Charms marshmallow come to life. But, and I can’t emphasize this enough: It’s a goddamn Russian spy!

We know it’s a spy. It’s called the spy whale, or if it’s a respectable journalism publication such as the Washington Post doing the reporting, an “alleged Russian spy whale.” The whale, whose sex I am not sure of (I haven’t seen it reported) thus begrudgingly will refer to as “it” even though I believe strongly in the ethical treatment of marine mammals even when they’re spies, was discovered around Hammerfest, Norway, by local fishermen in April wearing a harness that had “Equipment St. Petersburg” printed on it. According to the Post, researchers say that the harness may have held cameras and/or weapons and triggered “fresh speculation about a sea mammal special operations program that the Russian navy is believed to have been pursuing for years. Although the Russian Defense Ministry has denied the existence of such a program, the same ministry published an ad in 2016 seeking three male and two female bottlenose dolphins and offering a total of $24,000.”

Last week, Norway’s Police Security Service reported that the beluga was still cruising around Hammerfest. Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries official Jorgen Ree Wiig said that it was “strange” that the whale seemed comfortable around humans, but if that Cro-Magnon-skulled fucker is a spy, how is that strange at all? Of course it wants to be around humans! To spy on them! You pat its snout and it opens its big derpy mouth, crinkles its cute little spider eyes, and collects as much data as it can (hypothetically). What does it do with the data? Who knows! Does it even matter? Now is not really the time to be fraternizing with Russian spies given the 2016 election and the shit in the Mueller Report and all that.

And then, get this! It saved someone’s iPhone recently after they dropped it in the water:

Oh hell no. There is no natural way that beluga should understand why a dropped phone needs to be saved. Yeah it might be playing fetch and desperately lonely for affection, or it could be scheming (and I think it is). I bet you it has its own iPhone with a Notes app that is overflowing at this point and I wouldn’t be surprised if it performed some kind of rapid clone on that phone before bringing it back up to the surface.

Absolutely not. I love whales, but this one is a spy first and foremost, clearly.

Final verdict: Avoid the Russian spy.