Strangeness and Whales

You know your day is not going well when your whale runs away.
At least that is what I hear.
The boy was distraught. His whale had gone missing the night before. It had thunder-stormed and the whale was afraid of the lightning and the dark (though he liked the rain). I was certain the boy was playing a simple silly game.
I was driving along the same path that I normally took. There an old truck with a faded "For Sale" time. Here a house with so many add-ons you couldn't tell where the original house ended and where the wings began. To the left a the remnants of a barn and to the left...
The apple orchard was the same. The trees were gnarled, like clawed hands. The grass was tall around the trunks, though someone had taken the time to mow uneven paths between the rows. What was different about the field and the trees was the large black and white blow-up whale tethered with a white string to the trunk of one of the trees.

Noted things of interest: Jelly is not so hard to make, but apples are.