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Congratulations– the Flyers lost, so now you get stories about dead, violated Cetaceas.

NBC 40 reports:

A small dead whale was found on the beach in Atlantic City early Thursday morning, and had been marked with graffiti.

Officials with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center were on scene and say the cause of death has not yet been determined.  It’s not known when the whale washed ashore, but purple spray paint marked the carcass.

Upon investigating, a small dolphin was also found about 7 blocks away from the whale. Officials say there should be no cause for concern.  Bob Schoelkopf, Director of the MMSC, tells NBC 40 that the dolphin death is likely a mere coincidence, and believes that it is unrelated to the series of dolphin deaths that occurred along the shore last summer.

Bullshit. That whale offed all those dolphins and couldn’t stand to live with himself any longer. But that’s besides the point. Some fraternity pledge just earned his initiation early by tagging the whale with purple spray paint.

When I pledged in college, each brother had a task that a given pledge needed to complete in order to earn a signature. Those tasks ranged from the mundane (always have a pack of cigarettes on-hand to spot someone) to the ludicrous and potentially dangerous. But there were a few absurd items that gained you automatic initiation, and believe it or not I think one had something to do with breaking into Sea World. None of us ever came face-to-face with our white whale, so to speak, but it appears as though one local college student* did, and for that we congratulate him.

*Dan McQuade of Philly Mag points out that there are three local chapters of Tau Epsilon Phi, the believed fraternity in question here, at Penn, Rutgers and Rowan. Penn students are nuts, but they’re not that stupid. And a Rutgers student would’ve reflexively tried to penetrate the whale before tagging it. So that leaves us with Rowan. I’m going to bet a Rowan student spray painted a whale last night. Congratulations, dickhead.