Saturday: Shark and Sales

We heaved up early again this Saturday to go yard sale-ing. We were delighted to find what we are wondering is a new trend for summer yard sales or just a reaction to the terribly hot weather lately: indoor yard sales with---air conditioning! To be accurate, one yard sale was a big rummage sale for a school and one was actually a moving sale. A rummage sale is where a lot of people donate their used stuff for sale for a good cause, and a moving sale is, well, a sale people have to get rid of their things when they are moving. I think that a moving sale must be a good way to have someone else clean out your garage and help you get rid of those things that you really don't want to move (like cans of paint and garden hoses), but that aren't strictly speaking, garbage, either. Like a moving sale, an estate sale is also held inside the house, but an important difference is that in an estate sale, usually, the owner has "passed on" rather than moved away. My favorite purchases for the day? A giant ball thing with handles like cow's udders for fifteen cents, and an unopened case of fancy canning jars for $2.


In the evening, we met our new spy friend, Lee Sharkmon. His real name isn't Sharkmon, but who knows what his name really is. He won't show us any ID and he works for the feds (he's a federal agent), so who knows? We had a nice dinner with him (and this was after he met my parents and heard my US immigration policy rant---so you know he's a nice guy). We went walking on the pier and watched a young man reel in a 7-8 foot (2.5m) Bull shark. Bull sharks are interesting because they have the unique ability to survive in both salt and fresh water, so they can swim up rivers, and this is the scary part: they actually attack people. It isn't that the Bull shark is a bad guy, it's just that his 'unique abilities' allow him to be in places where he doesn't belong: in shallow waters where people often are. Or maybe it's the people who aren't "where they belong to be." I haven't any photos of this shark, alas, because I didn't have my camera. I might not have gotten a picture anyway since the shark slipped the hook at the top of the ladder. The fisherman who caught the shark is participating in a tag and release research program, so we were pleased to know that the next shark he catches will be tagged and let go.

The popular bait for catching sharks these days is rays. You can see in the video here how they are caught, handled and put on the hooks. The rays they use are Bull rays. Can you guess why they're called Bull rays? I will give you a hint: it has nothing to do with Bull sharks.