Shark Sighting. Who’s Swimming?

So you may have heard recently that there were some fish swimming around in the Outer Banks area. Around a week ago, a teenaged girl was out on a boogie board, and got scraped up by something. An inspection of her damaged board revealed some sizable tooth marks. More seriously, two teens were attacked on Sunday, and both lost an arm. This has caused a great deal of alarm for those thinking of heading to the beach. On Tuesday of this week, a kayak tour canceled a dolphin watching trip after a guide spotted a nine-foot bull shark in the waters of North Virginia Beach. Perhaps a sage decision. Bull sharks are notoriously aggressive.

But let’s put this in context.

We’ve followed the exploits of a beautiful girl on Twitter for a while now. Her name is Mary Lee, and she’s a statuesque Carcharodon carcharias, or Great White Shark. 16 feet and 3,456 pounds of nature’s beauty. Her Twitter account is also, by the by, hilarious.

She was initially tagged off of Cape Cod, but has been leisurely swimming the Mid-Atlantic coast for months. At one point she swam into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and once pinged about 100 yards off of Virginia Beach. Her favorite meal is seals, but she’ll eat just about anything. Even humans. But your chance of being a Mary Lee snack are pretty slim. Each year, four or five people are bitten by sharks at North Carolina beaches. Last year, 72 people were attacked world-wide, but only three of them died. If you don’t look like a meal or smell like a seal, you’re probably in good shape. Sharks also like to feed in those twilight hours just after dawn and just before sunset. Those may be bad times for an ocean dip. They also follow large schools of fish – even dolphins. If you see a bunch of them hauling freight, you might assume that something like Mary Lee is following them. Better towel off for a while.

Do you know what’s dangerous to Virginians? Rabies. As people were living their Jaws experience to the south, two people in Virginia Beach were attacked by a fox. Both have tested positive for rabies. Henrico County, which wraps around Richmond, has had 5 cases of rabies this year. There have been reported cases from one end of the Commonwealth to the other. If you see a wild animal, give it some room.

How about rats? Rats can carry rabies. They can carry a host of other diseases as well. In 1999, a woman in Petersburg was sitting down for her morning constitutional when one erupted from her throne and bit her on the…Well, you get the gist. Pretty good reason to do something about rat-attracting litter, no?

The National Health and Human Services Agency says that one creature is responsible for almost 10% of all animal-related deaths in America each year. Bears? Wolves? Sharks? Nope. Dogs. Almost 190 worldwide each year.

If there’s one beast in Virginia that’s truly dangerous, it would have to be a deer. Deer have a genetic form of road rage. They don’t use crosswalks, they ignore traffic signals, and they fail to merge. Thousands are injured, and some even die, after a run-in between their vehicle and a road-hogging deer. They sometimes even attack people. Fun to look at – horrible to pet.

All of that being said, who’s up for a swim?

* Mary Lee Glamor Shot via OCEARCH. Check them out.