You Have to Make Whale Noises First

There is an unwritten rule during Forest Whales programs.

Actually, I made it up on the spot one afternoon in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, about two minutes before my next group of elementary kids was due to walk through the gymnasium doors.

I was eating lunch. Clara was fully inflated, taking up half the gym the way she always does, which is to say she was impossible to ignore. The doors opened and about a dozen high school guys filed in, drawn by whatever force pulls teenage boys toward a 56-foot inflatable whale in their school gymnasium.

They stopped. They stared.

"What is this?"

"Why is this here?"

"Can we go in?"

Clara sits in the gym at Three Lakes.

I looked at the clock. I looked at the door. I looked at twelve high school boys who were trying very hard to look cool and failing completely because there was a whale.

"You can go in," I said. "But we have to do it quickly."

We piled into Clara's side tunnel together. I grabbed the zipper. And just before I opened the whale up, I paused and looked at the boys.

"First," I said, "All of you have to make whale noises. Right now. No exceptions."

I want to be clear: I did not know if they would do it. High school boys have a reputation to protect their reputations. Social awareness amongst teenagers is happening at all times, a constant negotiation between what you want to do and what you are willing to be seen doing.

They did not hesitate.

What followed was one of the more entertaining things I have witnessed in fifteen years of doing this. A dozen voices, some low and foghorn-deep, others in a high, wobbling falsetto, all honking and hooting and doing their best impression of something none of them had ever actually heard.

It was terrible, yet it was perfect.

It was the most sincere thing a group of teenagers had done in front of me in years.

The Ripple Effect

Three Lakes is a small town in the northwoods of Wisconsin, the kind of place where the principal knows every kid by name and the PTO shows up not because they have to but because they genuinely want to. Marc Busko, the principal, is exactly the kind of person you hope is running a school: personable, enthusiastic, and clearly appreciated by his staff.

When the school posted photos from the visit on Facebook, 165 people liked it. In a small town, that number means something. Likes are neighbors. Likes are parents who recognized their kid in the background. Likes are grandparents sharing the post to their own pages.

The ripple went further than the likes. A principal in a neighboring town reached out about bringing Clara to her school. A woman with a cabin near Three Lakes saw the post from 250 miles away in Illinois and inquired about bringing Clara to 740 students at the school where she works. A dozen high school boys who made whale noises on a Thursday afternoon may tell their own kids someday.

This is the thing about small towns and school communities: they talk. Not in the algorithmic way that social media platforms promise, but in the old, reliable, genuinely human way. Someone sees something worth sharing and they share it. Someone hears about it and tells their neighbor. A Facebook post from a northwoods elementary school finds its way to a suburban Chicago gymnasium.

I did not plan any of that. I just told twelve teenagers they had to make whale noises first.

They did. And here we are.

Forest Whales travels to schools, libraries, and community events across Wisconsin and the Midwest. If you would like to bring Clara to your community, visit forestwhales.com or reach out at dave@forestwhales.com.