Sharks get a raw deal when it comes to public perception, is the thinking of the learned and the green. "You're more likely to be killed by a falling coconut or a cow than by a shark, they say. For us watery people that comparison does not serve. Ain't nobody made so much as eye contact with a shark whilst standing under a coconut tree or on a cow farm. We worry about sharks when we're IN THE OCEAN, dressed like seals and acting not much better. No windsurfer, kiteboarder, SUPper or surfer has ever been even grazed by a falling coconut while in the lineup waiting for the next set.
Then there's the live and let live crowd.
"It's their ocean," they say.
"Yeah well it's my leg" we say back!
I don't misunderstand sharks. I understand perfectly: If a shark attacks me, I am befuckled. And I am not comforted by the "sharks don't want to eat people" line of thinking:
"Many will take a sample bite, and taste it with taste buds just behind their teeth, to be certain it is something properly edible. If it does not taste like food, they will often spit it out at this time, and swim away.
This explains why so many “attacks” on humans are just a single bite; most sharks do not feed on mammals and do not recognize the taste of the humans to be food."
Oh thank goodness. I'm not being eaten, I'm just being tasted. Good-bye thigh!
Poor misunderstood shark.
(Top: Illustration from a Wall Street Journal article. Bottom: Ain't no pictures I've seen of a shark sticking its tongue out to lick something...see if it likes it. They be all like this.)
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