It occurred to me that those who are more squeamish than I am may not wish to view all of the blood and gore in the included photos, so I’ve hidden them behind Javascript links that show or hide the photos when you click them.

I was flipping through the Tivo guide over the weekend and saw the title The Whale that Exploded on NGC-HD and decided that with a name like that I just had to watch it, so I set the Tivo to record it for later viewing. I finally got around to watching it last night. It details the circumstances of a 50-ton sperm whale that exploded in a Taiwanese city in January, 2004.

Here’s a picture of the scene (the whale’s back “blew out,” sending blood and intestines flying behind the truck):

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Ultimately, this turned out to be due to a combination of an injury to the whale and natural decomposition. What I found amusing (in a grim sort of way) was that there was a man “sleeping off a late night” in the white car:

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Just imagine that you’re sleeping off a bender in your car. You are out cold when all of sudden BOOM!   SPLAT! you wake to find a bloody mess on and around your car and a stench that one witness described as like “a thousand dead fishes.” Talk about a rude awakening!