Following the mysterious train explosion and getting chased away by transit police, Mark and Happy “took refuge”—as Rivera put it—in a local motel. With their train apparently stopped because of the other train explosion, their second and final day of fishing was also ruined. That fact, by the way, was forgotten as the two Trails focused on discovering the reason for the explosion.

Mark got in touch with one of his newest friends, Rex Scorpius, the animal trainer (an occupation Mark thinks makes him a nature expert). Rex was coincidentally nearby, visiting his mother, and knew something about the explosion. So Happy and Mark visited Rex at his mom’s place. While Rex happened to be helping his mom move to Los Angeles, he told Mark that—in spite of the fact that the explosion just occurred today—he knew why it happened: The train derailed, causing dangerous chemicals to spill out. The “authorities” tried to do a controlled burn to eliminate the spill, but it got out of hand and caused the explosion.

This was a lot of information for Rex (or anybody) to discover in a short time, all the while looking at the wreck from a distance, using binoculars. Maybe Rex has some abilities far beyond those of mortal man. He is, after all, a nature expert. Meanwhile, Mark and Happy vowed to carry on the investigation as Rex had to leave with his mother. But before you have to leave, let’s investigate today’s nature talk. You won’t need your binoculars, but you might need a respirator mask.

Based on an earlier statement this week about this exploded whale by Mark, today’s topic should not be surprising. It is rather light on science and nature, but an interesting and humorous tale of misguided optimism with tragi-comic results.

Whale + Dynamite = Moby Ick? Rivera makes another groaner PUNch line in the last panel. Of course, dynamite was not really used to capture or carve up whales in either the book or the movie of Moby Dick. In fact, it would have been absurd, since the point of whaling is to capture a whale in order to harvest its blubber and meat. I wonder how many people today have heard of Moby Dick, much less saw the movie (I did) or even read the book (I did)? Okay, I’ll stop. It’s just a silly pun. Hah!Hah!Hah!