The Larely Beagle – The Community Newspaper of Larely, California

San Francisco, CA – Social networking and micro-blogging giant Twitter was dealt a major blow today when their iconic and often used “fail whale”, which alerted Twitter users of temporary outages, was caught and killed by a Japanese whaling ship off the coast of Antarctica.

The tragic news was announced this morning by Twitter CEO Evan Williams, who said, “It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce the all-too-early passing of our beloved fail whale. He was an integral part of our company and the fact that he was taken from us in such an unexpected fashion makes it very hard for everyone. Sure, you may not have seen him as much these days with all the upgrades we’ve been making to our infrastructure, but next to our mascot, the fail whale was probably our most recognizable image. The fact that he’s gone hasn’t really set in yet, but once it does, it’s going to be pretty depressing around here.”

Williams went on to quantify the tragedy even further by saying, “The only possible parallel I can think of would be if Willy from ‘Free Wily’ had been killed between the first movie and ‘Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home’.”

Mourners looking to Japan for sympathy were left disappointed after Joji Morishita, Japan’s deputy whaling commissioner, was quoted as saying “While it is regrettable that such a famous whale was killed, Twitter users can rest assured that it died an honorable death and that the meat and blubber it yielded will help many people to lead better lives.”

Morishita’s words also did little to calm the rage of well known conservation organization Greenpeace, whose “Arctic Sunrise” vessel was in the same region as the whaling ship trying to prevent it from capturing a whale. According to Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace’s Executive Director, “We were in the area but arrived on the scene about five minutes too late. This was unfortunately enough time to see the fail whale’s brutal slaughtering, but not soon enough to have prevented it from happening. I don’t know how those people can sleep at night. Hopefully the death of such a high profile whale will rally people around the globe to take up our cause.”

Twitter hasn’t yet announced what will take the whale’s place. However, there is speculation they are planning on moving away from marine mammals in favor of something less likely to be captured and killed. Twitter has planned a press conference for early next week, at which the new “fail” mascot is expected to be unveiled.