Want To Buy Some Whale Puke? [Archive] - RonFez.net Messageboard

DJEvelEd

12-18-2006, 12:03 PM

<img src="http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/18/nyregion/18whale.600.jpg" border="0" width="600" height="350" />Monday, December 18, 2006Ambergris: From whale's gut to 'heirloom'By COREY KILGANNON THE NEW YORK TIMES<div id="piStorytext">MONTAUK, N.Y. -- In this season of strange presents from relatives, Dorothy Ferreira got a doozy the other day from her 82-year-old sister in Waterloo, Iowa. It was ugly. It weighed 4 pounds. There was no receipt in the box.Inside, she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000."I called my sister and asked her, 'What the heck did you send me?' " recalled Ferreira, 67, who has lived on the eastern tip of Long Island since 1982. "She said: 'I don't know, but I found it on the beach in Montauk 50 years ago and just kept it around. You're the one who lives by the ocean; ask someone out there what it is.' "So Ferreira called the town of East Hampton's department of natural resources, which dispatched an old salt from Montauk named Walter Galcik.Galcik, 80, concluded it might be ambergris, the substance created in the intestines of a sperm whale and spewed into the ocean. Also called "whale's pearl" or "floating gold," ambergris is a rare and often valuable ingredient in fine perfumes."He told me, 'Don't let this out of your sight,' " Ferreira said.She was soon summoned to show the thing at a town board meeting, after which a story in a local newspaper declared Ferreira the proud new owner of "heirloom whale barf.""If it really does have value, I'm not silly, of course I'd want to sell it," Ferreira said. "This could be my retirement."Ferreira's neighbor, Joe Luiksic, advised, "Put it on eBay." But endangered-species legislation has made that illegal.Ambergris begins as a waxlike substance secreted in the intestines of some sperm whales, perhaps to protect the whale from the hard, indigestible "beaks" of the giant squid upon which it feeds. The whales expel the blobs, dark and foul-smelling, which then float. After much seasoning by waves, wind, salt and sun, they may wash up as solid, fragrant chunks.Ambergris has been a valued commodity for centuries, used in perfume because of its strangely alluring aroma.Looks like guts.O&A should get some of this to put in the barrel torture. Just the sight of it is frightening.</div>

boeman

12-18-2006, 12:04 PM

I'm fuckin' starvin'

burrben

12-18-2006, 12:05 PM

i so wanna eat grapes right now

feralBoy

12-18-2006, 12:14 PM

I think they talked about this stuff in moby dick.  That book was like a correspondence course on whaling.  Anyway, I remember they cut open a sickly whale for this weird stuff that was used in perfume.  It's kinda cool to see what it actually looks like.

Doctor Z

12-18-2006, 12:17 PM

Looks like the inside of Big A's colon.

boeman

12-18-2006, 02:45 PM

Doctor_Z wrote: Looks like the inside of Big A's colon. Big AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

ralphbxny

12-18-2006, 02:48 PM

Whale puke  floating pearl and Pat from Moonachie Radio gold! We are fancy people on this site!

jocefus

12-18-2006, 02:49 PM

hmm i thought it was daves liver....