Sharks in Stories, Media, and Literature 213
speculated about the apparent recent increase in attacks by White Sharks.
“Jaws in Illinois” (2008) had less material to work with—the landing of a
single 1.5-m (5-ft) Bull Shark near St. Louis in 1937, an event which in-
vited even more than the usual MonsterQuest speculation. Animal Planet
aired a fictional documentary, Mermaids: The Body Found (2012), in which
mermaids were depicted as having co-occurred with Megs in polar seas 1.6
million years ago. This latitude extends the known range of Meg north-
ward; where mermaids lived is anybody’s guess.
Saturday Night Live featured numerous shark spoofs about a “Land
Shark” (“the cleverest of all sharks”) beginning in 1975 and coinciding with
the release of the movie Jaws. Usually voiced by Chevy Chase wearing a
shark headdress, the Land Shark would knock on doors pretending to be
a repairman, a flower deliveryman, a door-to-door salesman, and so on.
When the door was opened, he would pounce on and devour the occupant.
The Land Shark appeared in at least eight later episodes.
The presumed curative powers of shark products even made it into epi-
sodes of the TV drama Friday Night Lights. In season 2, Jason Street, the
paralyzed high school quarterback played by Scott Porter, goes to Mex-
ico to undergo an experimental medical procedure banned in the United
States. The admittedly risky operation involves injections of “shark blood”
that will allow him to walk again.
Books. There are just too many shark books around to start listing
them. Good sources can be found in appendix C (websites that provide
useful and accurate information on sharks); see especially the annotated
book lists at http://www.elasmo-research.org and Elasmodiver.Com. Among the
many recent engaging nonfiction books about sharks is The Devil’s Teeth
by Susan Casey. The book focuses on the White Sharks that come annu-
ally to the Farallon Islands off San Francisco to feed on sea lions and el-
ephant seals, and on the people who conducted research there (as well as
the camp followers of the researchers). Among children’s literature is the
popular Magic School Bus series, with some volumes about the sea con-
taining shark encounters. Our favorite is The Great Shark Escape, in which
Ms. Frizzle’s class trip winds up in an undersea adventure. Another shark-
themed series is the Shark Wars books by E. J. Altbacker. These books re-
count the adventures of the Shark Clans as they fight to survive in a chang-
ing ocean world.
Comic Strips. A deservedly popular cartoon strip that appears in over
250 newspapers in North America and more than 30 foreign countries is
Sherman’s Lagoon. The strip, drawn by Jim Toomey and launched in 1991,
stars an overweight, rather dim-witted White Shark named Sherman who