Shark Saturday (Part 2)
Sharks and musings about wishing I was high on cold medicine.
Hi Bestie!!
Shark Saturday is BACK. (Read, completely unrelated, Part 1, here.)
I took a Dayquil several hours ago and this may all trail into nothingness (if we should be so lucky). I’ve taken FOUR COVID tests and it’s just run-of-the-mill August misery. You go from hot to cold to swampy to ice cold to swamp ass to brick and then you go to the dentist for several hours and you’re bound to end up under the weather. All I can do is Doomscroll while watching bad TV (open to suggestions) and wondering how I can tidy my room so it can get painted next month.
(A good thing to worry about. Buttondown sent me a shame-y email this week and the reason I haven’t finished my issue about P-22 is because I’ve been looking, desperately, for a job. Open to suggestions! My sister would like for me to have a Lazy Girl Job.)
The Washington Post (democracy dies in darkness!!) published this piece the next day, which presupposes that sharks have best friends!
Great white sharks usually travel solo. A duo is baffling experts.
After scientists placed tracking devices on two great white sharks off the Georgia coast in December, they started to notice unusual behavior.
The sharks traveled along similar paths up the Atlantic Coast, reaching the southern coast of Canadian province Nova Scotia on the same day last month. Scientists think their migration might be groundbreaking.
Great white sharks, also known as white sharks, are typically solitary and fierce predators at the top of the ocean’s food chain, said Robert Hueter, the chief scientist at OCEARCH, a Utah nonprofit that studies marine life. But Hueter, who has studied sharks since the 1970s, said he had never seen white sharks travel similar routes at the same time for months.
The very nice man (I’d usually say that sardonically, but not this time) who leads the shark exhibit at the New York Aquarium told me months ago that the sharks have friends. They nibble on each other’s fins (and genitalia, ew) as they swim in the tank. Yes, I know that the great white shark is not in an aquarium tank (because, among other reasons, it can grow to be as long as twenty feet). Still! Sharks are sharks, man. A 2020 study reported that the grey reef shark tends to stick to the same social group. This study also noted that great white hangs around other animals, too, like office workers presumably hang around a water cooler. (I've never seen it!) If there are animals, sharks, and fish to eat, they would linger. Now, it seems, they’ll travel, too.
Sometimes you look forward to Saturdays because you work with your best friend. And sometimes they ask you to drive cross country with them. It makes sense to me!!
I’m happy to repeat myself: the thing about being alive is we’re learning more about the world around us every day. After three decades I am delighted to be surprised. This time, however, I think we should be more open-minded. OCEARCH has only been tagging for eleven years. We’ve been studying great white sharks for a limited amount of time. (People really hated them in the early 1970s.) We thought orcas were strict about their pods, but it turns out that some orcas are solitary (and like to flip boats). We’re not sure why.
The sharks, named Jekyll and Simon, were last tracked 4,000 miles away off the eastern coast of Quebec. Scientists are going to test their blood to see if they are biologically related. (OCEARCH collects blood, mucus, feces, and urine samples when the sharks are tagged.) They think it makes more sense for the pair to travel together if they’re brothers.
I get that; I want to do whatever my sister wants to do. (Because she is super cool.) I also want to do whatever my best friend wants to do (because she’s super cool, too). I’d swim 4,000 miles with Fiona, wouldn’t you? She knows where to get date shakes and has cool podcast recommendations.
DRIBS AND DRABS (MOSTLY PANCAKES):
The root beer float popsicles from Trader Joe’s SLAP. They didn’t get rid of the knot in my throat but they taste like the mid-1990s in the best way. There’s not a whole lot from that time I’d be interested in–definitely not pop music, maybe the economy? It was better, right?
My nieces and sister visited Maryland last week, and on their last morning, my mom texted, “Good morning. C and I made Fannie Farmer pancakes. They were devoured.” I had showered and was sure that with a Dayquil I would rally. I find that taking a Dayquil is what speed must be like, but less intense. Focused, motivated, fast. I never rallied (so maybe it’s all allergies–fuck!) but I did make the pancakes because I wanted them so badly. These pancakes are similar to the recipe I sent in April. Here’s the recipe, which was submitted to Food.com by user Miss Eve (the only recipe submitted by them, in fact):
INGREDIENTS
1 1⁄2 cups flour
2 1⁄2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
3⁄4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
3⁄4 cup milk (or more)
3 tablespoons melted butter
Mix together the dry ingredients. Add the beaten egg and melted butter and stir vigorously, adding more milk, if necessary, to make the batter just thin enough to pour. Drop by spoonfuls or pour from a pitcher onto a heated and greased griddle or frying pan using medium heat. When full of bubbles and the underside is browned, turn and brown the other side. Serve with maple syrup and additional butter.
Farmer was a celebrated cookbook author. I’m not sure which book (pamphlet?) my mom used. Unlike the commenter on Food.com, my mother did not grease the pan with salt pork. I used coconut milk and I think an egg substitute would work well, here.
My mom sent a photo, which I am including without permission:
She said the girls declined blueberries, and I was suddenly quite sad not to have any blueberries at home to put in mine, just chocolate chips.
I don’t buy blueberries. What if I only get the mealy, flavorless kind? (Listen to Fuit Love Letters and learn more about blueberries! Thank you, Fiona!!) I only make chocolate chip, and because I am a heathen that includes pumpkin, ube, or sweet potato (I haven’t actually made these yet). I tried to find the pumpkin recipe online and it was updated in January, and the recipe is not the same and now I am having a mini-crisis. So I guess there are more pancakes in our future. (Maybe. I haven’t found that Cherry Coke cream cheese recipe yet.)
Anyway, the morning you’re reading this I’m hoping to eat the leftovers. They also freeze beautifully.
There was a new moon this week. If you haven’t slept well this week, in spite of the cool nights and lack of moon, well, samesies. It’s been overcast as fuck this week, but if it’s not overcast, you can still peep the Perseids Meteor Shower, which ranks somewhere in my top five reasons I love August.
My copy of Prom Mom by Laura Lippman came in today, and my desperate hope, while I wrote this, was that I could stay awake long enough to read it after I showered. I haven’t read a lot of Lippman, but what I’ve read, I love. (Wilde Lake was too sad.)
p/s this
(I’m not putting that in the sources. What a tool.)
(AN OFF-BRAND CITY!!!!!)
SOURCES (for the dribs, too)
1.
Mogg K. The “Lazy-Girl Job” Is In Right Now. Here’s Why.. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-career-goal-of-the-moment-is-a-lazy-girl-job-f5075c4e. Published July 25, 2023. Accessed August 19, 2023.
2.
Eve M. Fannie Farmer Griddlecakes Recipe - Food.com. www.food.com. Accessed August 19, 2023. https://www.food.com/recipe/fannie-farmer-griddlecakes-417184
3.
Fannie Farmer. Wikipedia. Published July 11, 2023. Accessed August 19, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Farmer
4.
April 30, 2023, P.m 1:59. Sour Cherries (With a Pancake Recipe). buttondown.email. Published April 23, 2023. Accessed August 19, 2023. https://buttondown.email/KatherineMHill/archive/sour-cherries-with-a-pancake-recipe/
5.
Fruit Love Letters. pod.link. Accessed August 19, 2023. https://pod.link/1602743541/episode/a8bdf417b3e8a8436c902f3806f937a1
6.
MSN. www.msn.com. Published August 12, 2023. Accessed August 19, 2023. https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/perseid-meteor-shower-peaks-tonight-how-and-where-to-watch/ar-AA1fbLb9
7.
Melnick K. Great white sharks usually travel solo. A duo is baffling experts. Washington Post. Published August 16, 2023. Accessed August 19, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/15/great-white-sharks-travel-together/
8.
Magazine S, Kuta S. How Two Great White Shark “Buddies” Could Change Perceptions of the Species. Smithsonian Magazine. Published August 17, 2023. Accessed August 19, 2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-two-great-white-shark-buddies-could-change-perceptions-of-the-species-180982752/
9.
Che C. White Sharks May Have “Buddies,” Researchers Say. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/white-shark-pairs-research.html. Published August 10, 2023. Accessed August 19, 2023.
10.
Papastamatiou YP, Bodey TW, Caselle JE, et al. Multiyear social stability and social information use in reef sharks with diel fission–fusion dynamics. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 2020;287(1932):20201063. doi:https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1063
11.
Gammon S by K. A Group of Orca Outcasts Is Now Dominating an Entire Sea. The Atlantic. Published January 29, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/01/orcas-killer-whale-resident-transient/617862/