So what do you do when an 81 foot dead, potentially explosive whale washes up on the beach in your town? It happened in Trout River Newfoundland. Who knew that beached whales were explosive? Not me. It presents a problem for the town. Nobody wants to be blown up by a stinky rotting 81 foot blob of fatty flesh. Moreover, it’s going to get stinky in Trout River. At the same time, not many towns can boast of having this amazing creature on their beach. It seems townspeople would like the skeleton – what a great attraction for the town. Now how do you get from current state to clean, well-preserved skeleton? Whatever happens I hope the folks who live in Trout River are the eventual winners in the whale sweeps.
27th Street 
A decent whale skeleton was immensely valuable to Eskimo villages way back in the good old days. Lets say for example that you wanted to build a big honkin house down by the ocean. Your first problem is going to be that you live north of the tree line so there is no wood for niceties like walls or a roof. A whale rib cage though is big enough to walk around in. Just spear a couple dozen roaming polar bears, skin them and stretch the pelts over the rib cage and you are in business. Luxury. When a polar bear stands on its hind legs it can be about 12 feet tall and tends to get a bit cranky when folks poke them with spears. Just exactly how you go about getting a couple of dozen or so polar bear pelts without becoming dinner when armed with a bit of a spear will have to wait for another post.