SIDE SALAD - Everything crunchy is good.

THERE'S A REASON THE NAVY
CALLS IT SHORE LEAVE

As regular readers may remember, Side Salad adopted a mascot a while back: the loveable, dependable dolphin.

We're rethinking this stance now that Takoma the bottlenosed war dolphin has gone AWOL.

Yep. Seems the slippery mammal had better things to do than poking his nose around wet places for the Navy.

My favorite part of this story is a quote from his handler:



Petty Officer Whitaker had tempted fate by saying: "Why would they go missing when they have the best food and daily spruce-ups and health checks?" Two hours later Takoma had gone AWOL. "Twenty-four hours is not unusual," a nervous Petty Officer Whitaker said. "After all, he may meet some local company."



My guess is that he indeed found the aforementioned local company and decided he liked that a whole helluva lot better than getting blown up.