The headline at MSNBC reads:
Lost Whales Meander Back to Pacific Ocean
So how do we know they were lost? Whales, of course, are highly intelligent creatures with extraordinary navigational abilities. It seems to me, the odds would be pretty long against a pair of whales accidentally turning into San Francisco Bay, then heading upstream against a freshwater current. Still, scientists concerned with such things speculate why the whales went so far off course. They ponder and fret what must be wrong with the whales.
How about this: Maybe the whales involved are just eccentric, going their own way while the rest of the pod plods methodically north to summer feeding grounds. Maybe there's nothing wrong with them at all, except that they're "abnormal" in the sense that they don't do what every other whale does. Maybe they just wanted to get away from it all for a few days.
Isn't there a possibility that this whole episode says more about us and the grave concern we seem to feel when something or someone departs to the far slopes of the behavioral bell curve than it does about the whales?