Episode 3 includes the story “The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob.”
In 2003, a giant animal glob washed up on the beach in Chile. For several days, news accounts speculated that this could be some new species.
While reading these accounts at the time, I thought about how wonderful it was not to know for sure, how each article hinted at the possibility of discovering something grand and miraculous. I wanted to stay in that space of endless possibilities, but deep down I knew the story would likely end with a logical explanation.
Soon, scientists determined the blob was a rotting whale carcass. Now that I am attuned to news stories about sea blobs, I know these mysterious whale carcass blobs are not unusual.
I wrote “The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob” because I wanted to explore the idea of living with the exciting possibilities of discovering the unknown. In this story, the main character, Milt, is hospitalized right after news stories about the blob first appear. His wife, Sylvia, knowing how much he enjoys a good story, decides to stray from fact and give her husband a more fanciful version of events than what is in the news.
