The Shark of Barnesville Island
It was a calm, pleasant Saturday afternoon in mid-June several years ago when the incident happened. Barnesville Island, a fairly medium-sized island off the southern coast of Washington, felt this spirit of early summer perhaps more than any other part of the Pacific Northwest. This particular island had a beautiful navy-blue lagoon and a spellbinding beach on which the sand was as white as a seashell. The town of Barnesville was fairly small, in the southern part of the island surrounded by a spectacular forest, the beach, and the lagoon. Behind the town and forest was a looming dormant volcano, Mount Barnesville, about three-fourths of a thousand feet tall. Rumor had it that the summit, if you looked closely, still smoked after its eruption half a century ago.
Anyway, it was on this particular Saturday afternoon that it happened. It started with two tween boys, having just gotten out of the seventh grade for summer break, who were going fishing in the lagoon with their parents’ permission. They were walking through the suburbs of Barnesville toward the lagoon. They were just north of the lagoon when they stopped on the boardwalk leading off a sidewalk and pulled out a map of the lagoon.
“How about we go into the shallows?” asked Cooper. Cooper was the tallest and oldest of the two, and almost always led their adventures.
“Well, the shallows don’t have many fish, so we might as well not,” said Wyatt. Wyatt was short for his age, and not as adventurous as Cooper. But he did have a considerable amount of curiosity, perhaps more than Cooper.
“How about here?” Cooper pointed to a large rock that led to a fairly deep area of the lagoon at the edge.
“Exactly!” exclaimed Wyatt. “That’s our ideal spot!”
As they walked toward the rock, Cooper asked, “By the way, what are we going to do once we catch some fish?”
Wyatt held up some plastic clips with numbers on them. “Tag them with this. Then we release them. It’s so my mom can estimate the population of certain types of fish in the lagoon.” Wyatt’s mom was a PhD.-awarded marine biologist who founded an organization called the Barnesville Oceanology Team.
When they reached the rock, Cooper filled a fish tank with water in the nearby shallows. Then he baited Wyatt’s fishing rod with a colorful plastic lobster filled with fish food and threw it into the water. He handed the rod to Wyatt.
Cooper was about to arrange the tags so they’d be ready when he saw a brown, furry, plump creature in the forest undergrowth behind the rock. He leaned closer.
“Hedgehog!” he loudly whispered to Wyatt to avoid scaring it away. They were introduced as pets with European immigrants in the first quarter of the 20th century, 50 years before Mt. Barnesville’s most recent eruption.
The hedgehog was eating a bright red poppy when Cooper heard Wyatt yell, “Come here now! We’ve got a big one!”
Whatever this fish was, it had caught the plastic lobster and was about to drag Wyatt into the water by the fishing rod. Cooper ran over to hold Wyatt, but he flew off the rock into the water. They then started laughing.
“Too bad we don’t have a camera with us!” Wyatt chuckled loudly.
Then, all of a sudden, something hit him in the left side of his chest. It knocked the breath out of him. It felt like he’d been hit by a car. Then a surface like sandpaper scraped his back very roughly.
“GET OUT!” Cooper yelled. Wyatt swam as fast as possible to the shallows, then started running ashore.
Cooper and Wyatt looked quickly at the fish. It was a shark, perhaps even a great white. It was dull gray on the top, paper white on the bottom. It was frighteningly streamlined, like a nuclear submarine torpedo or Cooper’s mom’s convertible, and as long as Wyatt’s parents’ truck. It had a large snout, coal-black eyes without irises, and shining white teeth. The creature, having lost interest in the boys, swam away to the eastern part of the lagoon.
“Sh-sh-shark!” stammered a shocked Wyatt. “That was a shark!”
“Well, now you can tell your mom that there’s at least one great white here,” Cooper said. “Now, where did that thing go?”
“I think it swam to the east,” replied Wyatt.
“Now wait a second,” said Cooper. “Toward Barnesville Beach?”
Wyatt nodded. “I fear so--very much fear it.” He shuddered.
“Holy cow!” Cooper exclaimed. “The beach!” The beach was packed with swimmers at this time of day. He imagined all those people--being brutally attacked and eaten by a great white shark!
“We have to tell them!” Cooper started to make a beeline along the shoreline toward the beach.
“But wait!” said Wyatt, holding Cooper back by the shirt. “Don’t you think we should get our parents’ permission first?”
“Right!” said Cooper. “We have our cell phones; we can call them up right now!”
“So how about you call your parents?” asked Wyatt as he started walking back to the large rock. “I’ll go investigate that hedgehog you said you saw.”
Cooper pulled his smartphone from his pocket and dialed his dad’s number. There was a buzzing for a few seconds before his dad answered, “Hello?”
“Funny story, Dad,” Cooper chuckled. “A huge shark tried to attack Wyatt after he fell into the lagoon, and now it’s swimming toward the beach. What should we do?”
“I honestly just don’t know, Cooper,” answered his dad. “How about you ask Wyatt on what you should do? Just try to stay safe, no matter what he says. Bye now.” Then there was a short bout of buzzing again.
Wyatt ran back to Cooper. “What did they say?”
“My dad says he isn’t sure,” Cooper answered. “Why don’t you call up your own parents now?”
“Good idea!” Wyatt pulled out his cellphone and dialed his mom’s number. Another, more high-pitched buzzing droned on before a mellow “Hello?” was heard.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” said Wyatt. “I fell into the lagoon, and a gigantic shark tried to chase me to shore. I’m all right, but it swam to the beach, and I’m a little worried about what might happen to all those swimmers. What should I do?”
There was a silence for a few seconds, and then his mom answered, “It sounds very scary to me. But if you’re up to it, why don’t you tell the lifeguard there? They need a warning! Just try to stay as safe as needed, OK?”
“OK,” replied Wyatt. “Bye.” He pressed the button to end the call. After the buzzing concluded, he told Cooper, “My mom said we could go over there.”
“Let’s go, then!” said Cooper. With that, the two ran down the shore eastward, such in a hurry that they left the fishing equipment to pick up when they got back. As they ran, the hedgehog climbed up and over the edge of the fish tank and started swimming in it.
When the boys got to the beach, it was packed with people. Young women lay on towels under umbrellas to read. Young children were building sand castles using buckets and spades, occasionally adorning them with white and pink seashells and pine-green seaweed. The water, in shades of blue from sky to aquamarine to navy, was filled with boaters, swimmers, and snorkelers, with an occasional scuba diver or frisky dog. Surveying all this was the tanned lifeguard, sitting on a chair on metal stilts and with rubber lifesavers hung around it and a ladder at the back.
The lifeguard looked down at the boys in concern. “What do you want to tell me? Is that a scrape on your back? Who did that?”
When he asked about the scrape, some of the beachgoers looked at the scene in concern, too.
“A shark,” said Wyatt. “There’s a shark in the lagoon.”
“Wait--a shark?” asked the lifeguard.
“We saw it ourselves,” said Cooper. “We were fishing when it pulled my friend in by the fishing rod and tried to attack him. It then swam to the east, toward this beach.”
“That’s impossible!” exclaimed the lifeguard. “Those things live around here, but only outside the lagoon. And those narrow, rocky channels are the only openings to there. One of those huge things couldn’t get through!”
“I understand perfectly,” replied Wyatt, “but it probably managed to get through after a while, by squeezing through a little maybe.”
Cooper gazed off to the ocean for a while. He started to look back to the lifeguard, but then something caught his eye in the water. A large shudder went through him, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end. “Look!” he yelled, pointing toward the water.
Wyatt and the lifeguard looked to where he was pointing. There it was--a triangular, dull gray fin. It was slicing through the water like a knife through butter. And it was going toward the shore.
“See?” said Wyatt. “I just knew there was going to be danger here!”
The lifeguard blew his whistle as loudly as possible. “GET OUT OF THE WATER!” he yelled. “THERE’S A SHARK!”
With that, the beachgoers started screaming. They swam and ran as fast as they could for land. The dogs barked and splashed through the water and ran desperately onto land. Then all those in the water--not counting the boaters, who were safe on their boats--were on land.
Except for one young girl.
Her face was blanched to sheet white. She clearly wanted to quickly head for shore and be safe on dry land, but she was too petrified to move anywhere. The shark was getting nearer and more interested. Faster, closer, faster, closer.
Suddenly, before the lifeguard could come down and grab a lifesaver, Cooper ran to the water, dove in, and was now swimming as fast as he could to the girl. Wyatt followed in after him. Before the shark came within body-length to the girl, he grabbed her and started kicking to shore with Wyatt at his side.
“Is the shark real?” whimpered the girl. “Is it going to get us?”
“Oh, I sure hope not!” said Cooper.
“HURRY! HURRY!” yelled Wyatt.
After a half-minute of kicking, they got to shore. The boys were getting the girl onto land when Cooper felt something on his right thigh. It felt like a giant cougar’s paw was clawing him rigorously.
“IT’S BITING MY LEG!” he screamed.
Wyatt started kicking and punching the shark in the eyes and snout. The girl screamed and ran into her mother’s arms. The lifeguard was running to the scene with one of his lifesavers and a large stick. He and Wyatt kicked, punched, and hit the shark with the stick until it finally let go! The beast swam away from the beach. Wyatt and the lifeguard dragged the wounded Cooper ashore, and Wyatt called 911. He rested Cooper’s head and feet on the lifeguard’s lifesavers, bandaged up his wound with his shirt, and covered him with one of the girl’s mother’s beach towels until the ambulance came.
Cooper stayed in the hospital to have the wound treated and have time to recover. He was often visited by Wyatt and his own family, as well as some townspeople of Barnesville who had heard of the incident in the news and in the immediate vicinity in which it happened. Cooper’s family gave him many hugs and Get Well cards. Wyatt gave him a heartfelt drawing of him and Cooper, quite well-drawn. He also ended up receiving cards, flowers, and other gifts from people all over coastal Washington.
After a week in the hospital, Cooper was finally discharged. Cooper’s family, as well as Wyatt and his own family, was waiting outside his room. As they walked through the waiting room and out of the hospital, they found themselves being cheered on by several townspeople. Some were reporters for the news, and they were taking photos.
Cooper and Wyatt spun around, expecting a celebrity to be exiting behind them. But surprisingly, there was no one there. Just their families. They themselves were the celebrities here.
“Look!” said Wyatt’s mom. “They’re here for you!”
“You are going to be popular,” said Cooper’s dad.
One of the reporters filmed the boys and interviewed them, holding out a microphone like he was holding the hedgehog from earlier out to him and wanted him to investigate.
The interview was fairly brief, and Cooper and Wyatt explained the incident back and forth. Their families came up and gave thumbs-ups in their approval and how proud they were at them. And when they got in their families’ cars after the interview, they looked back and noticed the reporters following them in their own cars.
“Great,” mumbled Wyatt’s dad. “Now we’re going to have paparazzi.”