SHARK!!!

Dark yet with no glimmer of day, but in two hours I’ll be on Linda Avenue behind Cove School for the Friday walk. Starting just as the seven o’clock mill whistle signals that for all the years, we are schoolboys again. On WDLP, Mayor Carl Gray advising on his daily morning show, "if you don't want to hear about it on the radio, don't do it."

Cliff Upon Bay is an interesting place. Just beneath our porch, what for the last week or so appears to be a mullet hatchery and nursery was yesterday a feeding ground for sharks. Quite a large one yesterday morning, watching with binoculars, Linda guessed maybe eight feet long, almost straight down from us, streaking here and there with the speed of a lightning bolt, thrashing a breakfast feast in shallow water. Two more sharks later afternoon, smaller but decent size, in a feeding frenzy.

The water below us is shallow way, way out; I’m not a good judge of distance, but fifty yards or more. People wade way out to cast, sometimes seeming almost to the shipping channel. Children play out in the shallow depth well beyond where sharks come in to feed. “Do fish have memory?” I googled yesterday while watching the sharks thrashing up foam. Yes, fish have memories came the answer, can be taught habits, remember feeding grounds. Mr. Safety will not want to see granddaughters wading again in the shark feeding ground just beneath my balcony.

The sky is lighting up now, looks to promise a lovely Friday. In a few minutes flights of pelicans will glide by the balcony rail, some of them close enough to leap out and ride on if I were Tom Thumb instead of Tom Whoever. Pelicans are social, flights of five, six, eight birds gliding by, heading east in the morning, heading west toward the setting sun in the evening, why do they do that? The only answer that comes up on google has to do with setting and resetting the sense of direction for migrating birds. Here’s a science project for a middle-schooler.

Slept last night, from just after eight p.m. until about one as usual. Up momentarily then back to sleep until 4:48. Linda still asleep, I didn’t run my magic coffee machine, which grinds famously, but a pod of Louisiana’s Community coffee in my PAPA mug, and another bite of 72% cocoa Endangered Species with forest mint. The ultimate waker-upper.

And away we go.

T+ in +Time