go read (or listen to) this piece on npr.org!

"She says that when you touch a narwhal, it feels like a cold, hard, slippery inner tube. And the breath from their blowhole isn't that great. "They have whale breath," she says. "Kind of a heavy, little bit blubbery smell."

That night in her tent, Laidre hardly sleeps, waking every hour to check the nets. When she does drift off, narwhals swim into her dreams. One dream narwhal beaches itself by her tent. In another dream, she finds a strangely tiny narwhal, like a salamander, lying at her feet. "Now I had too many narwhals," she laughs, "but for various reasons I still couldn't tag them! So they were really weird dreams, and then I woke up and I thought, I think it might be time to go home.""