Mom and Dad had only left us on the beach alone for a short time. How could they have ever guessed what adventures we would find to get into?
My family went on a camping trip to Florida in the summer of 1960. One afternoon Mom and Dad left us on the beach alone for a short time while they walked farther ahead looking for seashells. We were to stay on the beach or only wade in the shallow water, which sounded safe and simple enough. They just hadn’t counted on the shark coming along.
Keith, who was the oldest, spotted it first. It was small as sharks go, and Keith decided he could catch it if we all helped to scare it up into the shallow water. All five of us Indiana kids joined in the adventure as we ran and splashed chasing the baby shark. “I’ve got it! “ Keith’s voice was exuberant, but he didn’t hang on to the shark’s tail very long as it began twisting back and snapping at him.
“That shark has a mouth full of teeth,” he gasped, revealing his sixteen years of wisdom. “It could bite my fingers off!” But Keith still didn’t give up easily; instead he came up with another plan. The chase was on again, and this time my 11-year old brother, Gary, caught the shark by the tail. Keith was quickly along side of him with a swim fin holding the shark’s head down to try and prevent it from biting anyone. They dragged the shark a few steps closer to the beach when Gary’s fear and adrenalin kicked in and he hurled it with all his might up onto the sand.
We decided to try to keep the shark alive by digging a hole deep enough that it would fill up with water. Still we had to keep enough sand between the hole and the ocean to keep the shark from swimming away. We found that, no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn’t dig the hole big enough or keep enough water on our baby shark. We continually scooped out sand, but more took its place as the water seeped in. We tried pouring water over the shark, though it became more and more obvious that we probably would not be able to keep our baby shark alive.
When Mom and Dad returned, they were dumbstruck over what we had done. Mama shuddered to think that where there was a baby shark, there might also be a mama shark. We hadn’t considered that.
But what was done was done, and now all there was to do was to decide what to do with the dying shark. We took a picture of Keith holding it to keep as evidence of our shark adventure. Gary never forgave Dad for not including him in the picture, after all he was the one who had caught it the last time, and that was the time that counted.
Dad, a high school science teacher, looked up sharks in the books he had brought along on our trip and determined that we had caught a blue shark. Not having anything available to measure with, we estimated the shark to be about 25 inches long.
Dad had been collecting a number of specimens of sea life and pickling them in formaldehyde to take back to his science class in Indiana. He wished that he could find a way to preserve the shark, but concluded it would not be possible to find a large enough container.
Joan, who was nine at the time, remembers that we were still hoping to find a way to pickle the shark until a raccoon found it and ate half of it. So there was nothing to do but to dispose of our treasure in a trash container at the campground where we were staying.
© 2002, 2009 by Janice Green
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