Feels like a trick question. A forty thousand
pound, forty foot long dead whale
washed ashore in Malibu on Monday, and is still there four days
later. Government officials aren’t sure what to do about it or, for
that matter, who should be doing it. From the
LA Times:

The lifeguards stationed at the beach said they were
game [to deal with the beached whale], but weren’t sure what to do.
The city of Malibu said the county would probably take care of it,
but the county insisted Little Dume is a private beach, which it is
not. Then local officials said the state might take care of it, but
the nearest state property appeared to be nearly a mile to the
southwest.

“There have been some issues with jurisdiction,” said Los Angeles
County Fire Inspector Quvondo Johnson.

Los Angeles Fire County Inspector Tony Imbrenda, meanwhile,
tells
local TV station KTLA that there will be meetings with beaches
and harbors and that LA county lifeguard personnel are “going to
formulate a plan to remove this whale from the beach.” What that
plan is, KTLA reports, is unknown, with the “pretty significant
state of decomposition” making towing the whale back into the ocean
no longer a possibility. It’ll be days before the whale might be
disposed of.

State officials were able to find out what happened to the fin
whale, an endangered species. They cut it up and determined it was
hit by a boat.