Читать книгу Animal SOS Animal - Octavio Pineda - Страница 9

It is of little use to be the largest of all the species

that have lived on Earth:

The bigger you come, the harder you fall,

and my size made me the most vulnerable.

In the first journeys at sea,

the mere sighting of my mass used to frighten seamen,

keeping them at bay; and when they were back at their ports,

they used to exaggerate my size,

describing me as a monster,

as the guardian of unknown waters.

But very soon the planet’s worst predator

overcame the distances of this big water sphere

and also their own fears to then see me

as an endless source of meat, fat and bones

and put me on the verge of extinction.

Fortunately, a sensible ban helped us recover in number.

However, just as David defeated Goliath,

my worst enemy

is now entering me as poison in the stomach.

And these beards that had allowed me to eat well for generations

and been so effective in filtering krill from water

now are unable to distinguish those little crustaceans

from the plastics that flood the oceans.