Death at SeaWorld by David Kirby

Author:David Kirby
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

23

Tilly’s Willy

One of John Jett’s biggest regrets in his life was that on that December day in 1995 when his best friend, Jeff, got fired from SeaWorld, he did not walk out with him in solidarity.

“These are totally trumped-up charges,” John agreed with his buddy. “Nobody has ever been fired for a tongue-tactile before, as far as I know.” However, John decided to stay at SeaWorld; he had no money and nowhere else to go. But John knew his days at the park would not last long. He had become as cynical as Jeff about killer whales in captivity.

“I wish I could go with you,” John said to Jeff. He was disillusioned with the whole operation, with watching the animals getting chased and beaten up, with the teeth drilling, the chronic infections, the small pools. Tilikum’s tail flukes dragged along the bottom in all but two of the tanks. Most of the orcas sat in the enclosures for much of the day with nothing to do but get bored. John had learned through Jeff, Astrid, and other sources about wild killer whales and their natural behavior. He was aware of the disconnect between what happens in the wild and what was going on in captivity. John was sickened by the living conditions of the orcas and put off by the urine- and feces-smelling backstage area at Sea Lion and Otter.

“It’s just not working out for me,” he told Jeff a few weeks after his coworker was fired. “I can’t continue to ignore how I feel about it.”

John’s unease toward SeaWorld was about to get worse. Chuck Tompkins called him into his office one day to inform John of a new assignment. As Tilikum’s team leader, John was to begin teaching Tilly approximations—small, discrete training steps—to present his penis to trainers. After Tilly learned to do that correctly, John and his team were supposed to masturbate the phallus, collect the semen, and freeze it for use in SeaWorld’s new artificial insemination (AI) program.

John was shocked and disgusted. “Sorry, Chuck,” he said. “I’m not going to put Tilikum through that. Get someone else.” For that insubordination, John was banished from Shamu and transferred to Sea Lion and Otter Stadium. But John was already on his way out the door, psychologically speaking.

Working with these smaller animals sometimes seemed more dangerous than working with the killer whales. John was bitten by an otter—a painful laceration on his leg—and often became uneasy around the other animals. Sea lions are smart, cunning, and surprisingly mobile on land. If they get mad, they can dash across the stage and bite somebody. Walruses are more dangerous—almost as quick on land as sea lions, they can easily push people against a wall and crush them with their heft and power.

John did not especially like working with pinnipeds, but at least it was less painful for him than going to Shamu Stadium every day had been. The pinnipeds were extraordinarily intelligent, although John got the sense they either didn’t realize or didn’t care that they were enclosed behind walls.

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