Mac The Knife

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One morning last winter, on our daily walk along the edge of the Pacific Ocean, “Inside Wave” Dave, the widely acknowledged dean of the surfers who gather every morning, to admire, and sometimes surf, the welcoming waves, said to me,

“Want to see what dropped into my yard last night, that I found when I went out at dawn?”

“Oh yeah!”

I instinctively stepped back as he held out the shark’s jaw.

“Where the hell did that come from?” I wanted to know.

“A seagull must have found it on the beach, and it became too heavy just as he passed over my house. So he dropped it.

“It’s a juvenile,” Dave said.

“Juvenile?! What would an adult shark’s jaw look like?”

Dave laughed. “Much bigger. Deadlier.”

During last winter’s unusually mild days, the ocean temperature never dropping below 60º, for the first time in memory, Lacey and I swam virtually every day.

“What are the chances I’ll run into one of these?” I asked.

“Very small,” Dave assured me, “but not zero,” diminishing the reassurance.

Google tells me sharks have been on earth 450 million years. Humans 300,000 years.

Both our species are having to adapt to changes in air and ocean temperatures. Our species’ adaptation is pretty shaky. Sharks have adapted to a lot more changes than we have.

In my 86 years, I suppose I must have averaged at least 2 visits to the dentist a year. If you figure in braces and filling cavities, I suspect it’s pretty close to 3 a year. That comes to about 260 visits to help me keep most of my teeth this long.

That shark has never been to the dentist. Take another look.

If you were a betting person, on whom would you put your money to still be around in 10,000 years?