Menopause doesn't happen to animals because their lives are short. Except for pilot whales, and also killer whales who can live past 90. In her thirties, a killer female stops reproducing to yield to her daughters, and to realize the grandchildren. Her pod must stay together, a simple design, this gathering village. Sex ends for the next fifty years. She has no further need for the penis as long as a hose, the weightless contact, distant, like jumbo jets refueling in mid-air. Fathers leave for younger mounts. Sons stay because their families survive longer in the invisible net of a mother, her flashes cooled by deeper water.