It used to be a practice confined to pacts with the devil, but now
an anonymous vendor in America is attempting to sell the soul of the
London whale.
Internet auction site e-bay, where the soul of the whale that died
two weeks ago after swimming up the River Thames is being offered, has
said it can’t sell things that people don’t own and will take the item
off its site.
But the vendor appears undeterred.
"I was
accompanying the poor whale in his last journey, and he handed his soul
to me. He asked me to sell it, so I could invest the money raised in
other bottlenosed whales," said the seller from Minneapolis, giving the
whale the wrong gender.
It is not the first item of whale-related memorabilia to go up for sale on eBay.
The
watering can used to keep the female whale wet as rescuers vainly tried
to ship her back out to sea on January 21 was sold on Wednesday for
2,050 pounds ($3,642), and someone is even trying to sell water from
the river on the grounds the whale swam through it.
The soul seller describes the proud possession as "100 percent soul" and promises to ship it anywhere in the world.
"This soul will only increase in value in the future," wrote the vendor.
Illustrated
with a picture purporting to be of a whale’s brain, a late spurt of
interest boosted the bid price from $1 to $17.81 with just 19 hours to
go before the offer ends.
"It is a listing that will be taken
down," an e-bay spokesman told Reuters. "Our policy states clearly that
people can’t offer for sale things they don’t own."
