WHAT EVEN THE FUCK IS THAT LOOK IF NOT GAY. LIKE GENUINELY. WHAT. ELSE. That’s not ‘omg ur so adorkable and grumpy, friend.’ That’s ‘omg ur so adorkable and grumpy and I am highly turned on by your mild anger and sultyness, I’d like to have some very hot sex with you. Pls stay angry and grumpy and sultry for it, I like it’. Fucking fuck sake. AND LOOK AT THAT FUCKING HIP SWAY/FOOT SWITCH THING WHAT EVEN IS THAT. HOW MANY WOMEN DO U WANNA BET MAURA’S SLEPT WITH COS THAT FACE LOOKS RELAXED AND EXPERIENCED IF YOU ASK ME. Fucking Sasha…
Have you heard the good word about the Pembrokeshire walrus yet?
This walrus is fucken lost.
But Wales has lost its collective shit about it. Theyâre generally keeping its location secret to keep people away, but we get updates every day if itâs still here, if itâs happy, if itâs healthy. We think it was in Ireland about two weeks ago, which is interesting, because it is not actually native to Ireland either. Why is it here? No one knows.
In attempting to climb aboard a dinghy in Tenby it capsized it.
It then proceeded to Tenby harbour where it tried to climb aboard a fishing boat.
Incredibly, this is not an April Fools
Today on English People RUIN Everything, a bunch of English tourists from Essex and Leeds broke covid-19 regulations and travelled to Tenby over Easter to try and see Wally (so named after Whereâs Wally) and crowded him with jet skis and surfboards and stuff, so heâs not been seen since Monday. We donât know yet if heâs moved to a secluded spot again, or left Wales entirely.
But, you know, I doubt we were going to have Wally for much longer anyway, since they need to head back home again at some point. Godspeed, Wally. May your fish be ever plentiful.
The English went back home and Wally came back to Tenby! We stan a true Welsh icon, folks.
Some facts about Wally:
She is named after Whereâs Wally because she is hard to spot
She was previously in Ireland, and then secluded beaches in Pembrokeshire, but has really taken a shine to Tenby, which is a delightful village
She has a scar on one flipper but itâs long-healed and doesnât seem to bother her
She is the southern-most walrus ever spotted in the wild!
The current theory as to how she got here is that she fell asleep on an ice floe that drifted south, but sheâs not bothered about returning yet
Sheâs believed to be two years old
Her gender is still a bit of a mystery but we seem to be leaning female
This story on Wales Online claims sheâs believed to be male, but then uses female pronouns. It also features a video of some Welsh people chatting about Wally, including a child whose first language is very clearly Welsh and by the end of his part is struggling to think of things to say about the walrus in English.
WALLY UPDATE!!
The Western Telegraph has opted for male pronouns, and is being very firm that Wally is male, although other news outlets are still all over the place. But what has Wally been up to the past few days?
He is rapidly gaining weight, and is still giving no cause for concern to either of the organisations watching him (which are the RSPCA a bit and Welsh Marine Life Rescue a lot; this is funny though because a walrus is so far outside of the wheelhouse of either of those organisations like weâre all just guessing here, lads)
His delinquent ways have continued - he has now attempted to climb onto multiple buoys (all unsuccessfully) and at one point nearly got a mooring rope stuck around his neck.Â
Has he learned from this?
FOLKS HE HAS NOT!
He is now a Fashion Icon. He has surfaced multiple times wearing accessories in his moustache. Mostly this has been shells, but three days ago he upped his fashion game by wearing this starfish:
What an Icon.
The photographer of this picture, one Amy Compton who has been Wallyâs official photographer since the start, has been making these delightful Wally masks (inset). They sell for ÂŁ5, of which ÂŁ1 goes to Welsh Marine Life Rescue. If you would like your own Wally mask, contact her here!
My mother came for a visit today and we checked and Tenby is an hour away from me, so we went for a Lovely Day Trip to Find a Walrus.
Friends, I took the shittest photo there has ever been of a Walrus. But I absolutely did get to see em.
A lifeboat wandered by to check em out at one point, and ey just⊠sank. Just dropped below the surface like Homer Simpson moving backwards into a hedge. After a while the boat left, and Wally surfaced again.
I can now confirm that ey really, really likes blowing water around like a whale, and also kept eyeing up that buoy next to em.
Also, I had entirely forgotten how comically beautiful Tenby is, but thatâs an aside
Time for a Wally Update!!!
Itâs only a little one, but apparently weâre getting Serious about this walrus, lads - the police are now stepping in to say that anyone interfering with Wally (examples of this interference to date: throwing things at him, taking boats and paddle boards out to him, throwing fish overboard to tempt him closer, etc) is committing a criminal offence and we must send evidence of Assholes to them. So thatâs fun!
Meanwhile, the tense stand-off between the RNLI and Wally continues over Who Gets To Use The Lifeboat Slipway. Here is a picture of Wally in full delinquent mode.
What a public menace.
Time for the weekly Wally news!
Here is the problem with 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato using the slipway of a lifeboat station as a spa bed: sometimes, canoeists get in trouble near Stackpole and need rescuing and then some underwhelmed Welsh coast guard is going to have to try to chase said predatory sea potato off the slipway so they can launch the boat.
Here is the problem with that scenario: an underwhelmed Welsh coast guard basically views 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato as a sort of ornery gelatinous cow, and so will try to do this with, and I am not making this up, a broom. But a ton of overgrown seal has no fear of brooms, so the attempt is not entirely successful under time-sensitive conditions while canoeists are actively drowning 10 miles away.
Which did work long enough to get the boat out, and then Wally clambered back aboard barely minutes later and fell asleep again. So trick learned, I guess.
Anyway, since Iâve apparently become Tumblrâs primary Wally journalist, I thought Iâd go for a cheeky visit again today so I could report on their condition FIRST HAND (youâre all welcome, I have incredible integrity). Today I tried using a binocular over my phone camera with was extremely stressful and moderately successful - and I have two pieces of NEWS.
Story the First
Two dinghies with divers aboard suddenly turned up and sailed right up to them. There are Welsh Marine Life Rescue volunteers everywhere, and one woman immediately yelled âYOU ARE TOO CLOSE. MOVE AWAY.â
Everyone on the cliff went silent. The boats went closer.
âYOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW,â yelled the beachmaster. âMOVE AWAY.â
Tumblrs, they did not.
âCAN YOU HEAR ME?â she yelled. âMOVE AWAY.â
At which point, the whole fucken cliff starts joining in, because Welsh people are Like That.
âMove away!â
âLeave âim alone, mun!â
âMove away, butt, what you doing!â
âHeâs the size of an 'orse, bois, canât you see 'im from here?!â
âBloody move you fucks, youâll scare 'im away again!â
(That last one was, I swear, an eighty year old woman.)
The boats, suddenly being yelled at by a whole cliff of Welsh people, sailed away. Later, we followed the beachmaster who was now on a mission, and found her with a couple of community police officers ripping the shit out of the divers. It was very satisfying.
Story the Second
I mentioned my binocular and phone trick. It came in handy. At first it gave me some very satisfying shots for a distance picture on a phone camera:
But, you know, whatever.
But THEN I got this picture:
which I got 0.256778 seconds before that majestic Arctic beast of purest beautiful nature untamed FELL OFF THE SIDE OF THE SLIPWAY LIKE A CAT THAT GOT TOO CLOSE TO A TABLE EDGE
Wally was fine, the seagull to the right was traumatised.
This is not an update as such but my friend Chris who I took with me to get the scoop on Wally on Sunday had a real camera with him, and he has produced a WAY better photo than I did, and I want you all to see Just How Louche a Walrus is capable of looking:
Handsome boi
Okay, so this post went from 24,000 notes to 40,000 overnight, and I am getting a lot of important scientific queries about Wally! So I shall call upon my expertise as a skilled journalist of huge integrity and also a genuine, actual lecturer in environmental science to answer them all as best I can. I shall also use pictures.
1. When did this happen?
I have included many links in this thread to news articles on Wally, each of which is dated, so you can check those for accurate dates; but, xe turned up in Ireland in March 2021, and then made hir way to Pembrokeshire, Wales end of March. Xe reached Tenby a week or so later in April, and now refuses to leave. As of this update (6th May, 2021) xeâs still there and chillinâ - my friend Chrisâ louche photo there was taken on Sunday the 2nd May.Â
I shall date all updates from now on. Apologies for this uncharacteristic lapse in my journalistic performance. I have let Wally down.
2. âOh my god do you guys call Waldo Wally?!??â
Folks!! Folks so many of you are doing this!!! But hereâs the thing!!!
Whereâs Wally is a British series and thatâs the original name!!! It has been translated and regionalised around the world, and the name was changed in 28 of them!! A sizeable number donât even sound like âWallyâ!!! In France heâs Charlie! In Lithuania heâs Jonas! In Arabic versions heâs FuážĆ«lÄ«!!!
Yet only one nationality is repeatedly reacting with astonishment while assuming theirs is the one true original version!!! Guess which one!!! You have to stop!!! Especially the few who have responded with out and out swearing and aggression when Iâve explained!!! THIS POST IS ABOUT A WALRUS!!!!
3. Is Wally okay in Wales? Does xe need to leave/be moved?
Xeâs currently fine - an Arctic walrus can handle water temperatures of up to 15 degrees celsius, which West Wales is certainly currently accommodating. Xe was also distressingly underweight when first spotted fresh off the ice floe, but weâve been monitoring hir health and xeâs roughly doubled hir bodyweight and is very healthy. I asked the fishmonger in Tenby if xeâs affecting the catch and the nice man said no and sold me a lemon sole for my mam. So right now, Wally is doing great, all needs met, with no real clashes with other stakeholders (i.e. fishers and that) except for, you know, the one (i.e. the lifeboat people).
However, high summer in Wales is warm enough that the sea will top the temperature threshold. So, weâre expecting Wally to leave by hirself in a month or so, if xe doesnât decide to move sooner. Whether xe decides to swim all the way back home, or xe starts just moving north along the western coast and next turns up in the Isle of Mann or Scotland to continue hir holiday of the Celtic Ring remains to be seen. But, xeâll do it hirself eventually, so itâs down to us to just keep hir happy and healthy for as long as xe chooses to stay.
4. I think Wally is female!
Yeah, maybe
5. I think Wally is male!
Very possibly
6. I think walruses have no concept of gender!
Almost definitely
7. Whatâs Walrus in Welsh?
Theyâre not native, so the Cymricisation âwalrwsâ is getting a lot of use - but, Welsh is nothing if not poetic, so in official literature itâs âmorfarchâ, which means âsea stallionâ or âsea knightâ depending on your dialect.
8. Did they really use a broom and an airhorn on Wally?!
Here is a forlorn coast guard attempting to shift hir with a broom:
And here is the same coastguard attempting to shift hir with an airhorn:
9. I cannot believe this walrus is a delinquent!!!
Very well. Here is Wallyâs criminal case file, including photographic evidence of two boarded boats and hir mugshot:
it fucks me up that tolkien only died in 1973. dude has the vibe of a victorian scholar who wrote all his manuscripts by candlelight but then you look him up and realise that he knew what color tv was. what the fuck.
