I'm glad that I'm not a seal

I'm torn about Shark Week. On one hand, I can't stomach it. It seems that whenever I flip on the Discovery channel during this highly-anticipated week, there is some gory scene with blood and screaming and that deep-voice narrator man saying something like "one second, it was a fun family vacation, and then the waters were colored with blood and ragged bits of bone and flesh." Ew. Also, I enjoy taking leisurely swims in the ocean, and I don't want shark week to make me start thinking about getting my leg chomped off when I do so. That would ruin my relaxed mood. Also, what about those poor baby seals? Shark Week people think it's funny to show us a cute little clip of seals frolicking through the water all happy, and then pan to them being torn to pieces by a meanie shark. It's enough to make a girl cry.

But on the other hand, I love it. Secret-now-not-secret fact about me: I was basically obsessed with sharks senior year of high school. I was in this incredible biology class and we could kind of tailor the class to what we wanted to learn individually. So I went all out over sharks. Most of the year was spent researching them with my friends in my lab group, and then we got to dissect one (Although I'm no "science person", I heart dissections. another strange fact). Their brains are SO COOL. And then we gave a big presentation on them. It was so fun. (Side note: I also had a big appreciation for turtles that year. My teacher, Mr. Murphy, had one named Taco, and I always played with him. When we had to create and conduct an experiment for a class assignment, I conducted one called "What Makes Taco Go Fast." After testing him on snow, a hot surface, and tempting him with lots of food, the answer was - nothing. nothing makes a turtle go fast.)

In short, although I am sometimes tempted to pass out while watching, Shark Week brings me to a nostalgic, happy place. Especially this series they've been showing called Air Jaws, about film crews/photographers who track Great Whites and capture them when they breach the water as they attack. The footage is phenomenal. Check out the video below because it is NUTS and freaking awesome. (This isn't from the series I watched, but was the best footage of sharks jumping out of the water that I could find on youtube....I think it says it's from Planet Earth)