INSIDE SCOOP

-- Compiled by the Daily Pilot staff

Sometimes, a reporter’s just got to drop everything she’s doing.

Especially when people call the newsroom about killer whale sightings

near Newport Pier.

We’re not talking about your garden-variety gray whale. Not even

close. We mean Shamu and friends.

Pam Watts, one of the owners of Newport Landing -- a company in the

Balboa Fun Zone that does sportfishing and whale watching charters --

said she was excited when she heard about the rare visitors.

How often does a killer whale do a back stroke in her backyard? Not

every day or even every year, Watts said.

“I’ve been here 25 years,” she said. “And I never saw one.”

She was supposed to go on a boat ride Friday morning, but skipped it.

“I miss it one day and this is what happens,” Watts said with a laugh.

The only time she saw a killer whale was in the ocean in Dana Point when

she worked as a deck hand there, she said.

“A couple of them collided with a gray whale,” she recalled. “It was

quite a scene.”

Unfortunately, by the time a reporter and photographer could get a

boat ride, the whales were reportedly too far out at sea to reach.

Definitely a story of the one that got away.

Setting an ‘egg-xample’

Amanda Strook made an egg stand on end Tuesday morning. She, not to

mention the cast of “Good Morning America,” was determined to test the

supposed theory that something about the beginning of Spring affects the

earth’s center of gravity and makes the yolk of an egg settle to the

bottom.

Neil Stringer, Strook’s boss at a Newport Beach dentist’s office, even

took a picture of her standing behind it and called the Pilot to let us

know.

But local experts at UC Irvine say they’re not familiar with this

particular egg phenomenon. Riley Newman, a professor of physics at the

university, chuckled and said it sounded more like a practical joke.