Of course she would bite. Kasatka the 'killer whale' is a big beautiful creature whose natural home is the sea. She has the capacity to swim-not even swim but shoot through the water for miles at a time without tiring.

She is designed for speed, for long long distances, and kept in a pool. Large perhaps but only by human standards.

People make money off of her beauty and talent. She is taught to perform tricks-on the company's schedule, precisely at the moments her trainer signals her.

She loves her trainer-he feeds her fish, tells her jokes, touches her, lets her know in his way she's special. She has learned his way of communicating. But somewhere deep inside, even if perhaps she has never lived in the sea, her body knows she can go far. Her body knows of food that is alive and singing. Her body knows there are languages she has never learned-that she could keen a message that could be heard and understood by other whales miles away. Her body has knowledge within of mountains and reefs and canyons under the sea, of the moon and the sun seen through a deep aqueous sky.

The pool is surrounded by concrete, by air, by her trainer's medium of life that she cannot breathe. There is no escape that she could survive.

Today seems like just another day, like all these other days. He tells her: Do this!

She bites him-bites down on his foot and drags him deep below. Her mouth in effect her hands, her only tool. She holds him under water in her medium where HE cannot breathe-just long enough to make a point. Does he get it?

In case he does not, in case he thinks this is just an irritable impulse-she does it a second time. She could drown him, but does not. She pins him at the bottom of the pool for a long minute, and releases.

Of course his foot would hurt.

But does he get it? She is alive. She is 30 years old. How much longer in this pool?

Does he see? Perhaps not while in pain, but he will certainly think about this for days to come.

She is not Kasatka, the killer whale owned by SeaWorld.

She is an orca.