After Taking One Good Whiff, Local Sharks Decide to Pass On Jared
After taking one good whiff, sharks local to New Smyrna Beach, Florida, decided to pass on Jared.
“Don’t get me wrong, we were starving,” one shark told us. “But man, that guy smelled awful. Like he lit his hair on fire, fell into a sewer, and then rubbed a dead rat all over his body. Maybe worse than that, actually.”
“Not all sharks are on the same diet,” another shark said. “Me and my crew, for example, don’t count calories. Dump a literal busload of humans in the water, we’ll have ourselves a feast. But for God’s sake, they need to have taken a bath in the past decade. That guy Jared, he made me want to go vegetarian. In fact, my boy [incomprehensible shark noise] did. Dude actually went vegetarian. [Incomprehensible shark noise] — of all people!”
Jared, originally from Daytona, was annoyed. Not that he avoided being eaten, but that the sharks had to be so rude about it.
We contacted him over email, concerned about the smell.
“Hey man fuck those sharks,” Jared wrote. “So maybe I don’t wear deodorant. Or shave. Or use soap. What good is soap gonna do me, man? Life is short. You gotta set your priorities. Soap’s not one of mine. Sorry not sorry.”
After weeks of wading around in the water at New Smyrna Beach, we were able to get in touch with the shark that had gone vegetarian after his encounter with Jared.
“My buddies say I could just be pescatarian, and I get that,” he told us. “But it seems like a slippery slope. And anyway I can’t get that awful, awful smell out of my head. But we also have to ask ourselves, how sustainable are humans anyway? If we want to keep them around for a while, we need to slow down our consumption. And besides, you can’t even get the good stuff anymore — organic humans are so hard to find these days. And you don’t know how they were treated out there, on land. You can always taste the difference between a happy, cage-free human and one that’s been systemically oppressed his or her entire life. That Jared guy — dude’s definitely had a rough life. And that sucks for him, sure, but sympathy doesn’t bring back an appetite. Not after a smell like that.”
Reports from lifeguards at New Smyrna Beach say there’s been far fewer shark attacks in recent weeks. But whether that’s because the sharks are avoiding the beach, or because people are avoiding Jared and sunbathing elsewhere is difficult to say.
