I found this info on the Internet: “The youths are
hospitalized at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, said Martha
Harlan, a spokeswoman for the hospital. The girl's left arm was amputated below
the elbow, and she suffered lower leg tissue damage, Harlan said, while the
boy's left arm was amputated below the shoulder.”
Sunday's late afternoon attacks happened less than
90 minutes apart. The girl was attacked first; the boy was attacked about two
miles away – both of them were said to be in waist-deep water.
I am praying for the victims of those attacks.
When I heard that report, I thought about the times
I stood in waist-deep ocean water in Charleston (S.C.) or Myrtle Beach. I sometimes
ventured neck-deep from shore, never thinking much about sharks. I guess we
didn’t hear a lot about shark attacks in the 1950s and ’60s, when I lived near
Greenville, S.C.
During my 1971 stint in Vietnam, I was privileged
to leave Long Binh for a one-day excursion to Vung Tau’s beautiful beach.
Little kids sold us pineapple slices on sticks before a bunch of us GIs splashed
into waves rolling in from the South China Sea.
We later heard this message over a loudspeaker:
“Get
out of the water! Get out of the water!”
We clamored to shore and asked, “Why?”
A short distance down the beach, some GIs were
gathering. We hurried to see what they knew about that get-out-of-the water
warning. They were looking at a dead, 3-foot black snake lying on the sand.
“That’s a sea snake,” one of the soldiers said.
“There’s a herd of them going up the beach. They can kill you.”
(A group of snakes is generally called a bed, den,
pit or nest – not a “herd.” I was later told that a bite from a sea snake is
not usually fatal. But I think tangling with a sea snake could possibly scare
you to death.)
According to “Wikipedia,” sea snakes, also known as
coral reef snakes, are “the Hydrophiinae” and are found in warm coastal waters
from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Sea snakes are a subfamily of “venomous elapid snakes
that inhabit marine environments for most or all of their lives.” They are closely related to venomous terrestrial
snakes in Australia. All have paddle-like tails and many have “laterally
compressed bodies that give them an eel-like appearance.”
Yes, there are things in the ocean that can “get
you.”
As a youngster, I used to read about electric eels and wonder if one
might “get me” when I went to the beach. And on occasions when I’d hear my
pastor preach about the account of Jonah and the big fish that swallowed him in
one gulp, I'd remind myself to “get right with God” before moseying into the
briny main spilling onto Myrtle Beach.
I guess you won’t find the kind of sea snake we saw
in Vietnam swimming off the coast of North Carolina, but you may find sharks,
and sharks are the sea creatures that seem to terrorize us most.
The movie “Jaws,” a 1975 thriller film directed by
Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name, put
shark-phobia into lots of folk. In that fictional story, a huge great white
shark attacks beachgoers. A police chief, a marine biologist, and a shark
hunter tangle with Mr. Shark. The music in the film is pretty spooky, too.
At my age, I don’t intend to “bathe” in the ocean,
anymore. I enjoyed doing that as a young person. But, now, I don’t move very
fast, and I’m a bigger shark-bait than I used to be. And I know lots more about
things in the ocean that can “get you.”
