A certain amount of perplexity has greeted our running coverage of the fate of Forgea. She is the two-year-old mutt who is trapped on a tanker that nearly two months ago was abandoned by her crew after a deadly fire and has has been drifting in the vast Pacific ever since. A search has been mounted at great expense by the Hawaiian Humane Society. A series of rescue attempts has failed. The latest was thwarted not by wind or weather but by the fearful pooch herself, who dashed below decks and hid from a boarding party of would–be saviors. Now the United States Coast Guard has stepped in to divert the dangerously damaged ship from the fragile reef ecosystem of the Johnston Atoll. A Coast Guard spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that the ship was deemed too damaged to be towed to port and would most likely be sunk. The president of the local humane society, which has already spent $48,000 to save the animal, is now vowing that her staff will make arrangements to board the ship in open water and save the dog if, once again, rescuers on the scene are unable to do so. We have run six stories detailing the dog’s saga in our pre- and post-launch editions, and at this point it seems possible that she may indeed go down with her ship. We don’t mind saying that with all that’s going on in the world we find the efforts to rescue Forgea to be touching.