A Great White Shark is Coming Straight for Texas, Will Probably Devour Us All

By Eric Nicholson Wed., Jun. 18 2014 at 1:00 PM

On Sunday afternoon, a "ping" from a tracking device confirmed scientists' suspicions: Katherine, a 2,300-pound great white shark tagged last August off of Cape Cod, is headed straight for Texas. Right now, she's about 100 miles from the Florida panhandle. In another week, she could be past the Mississippi. Then, Texas. A second great white, Betsy, is hot on her tail fins.

Researcher Bob Hueter is delighted. The data relayed by the new real-time (more or less) tracking device is overturning scientists' long-held assumptions about great white behavior, he told the Houston Chronicle.

But Hueter is based at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, i.e. a place Katherine has already passed. He's in the clear. But Texans should not let the disinterested-scientist rhetoric distract them from the true message here. It's time to panic and panic hard.

Using the data points from Katherine's 4,800-mile journey and factoring in our own unparalleled insights into shark behavior, we at Unfair Park have projected the shark's path. As you can see in the photo above, Katherine will spend the next week-and-a-half zig-zagging around the Gulf of Mexico before abruptly making a beeline for Dallas.

It looks like Beaumont will be the first to fall, followed by a succession of East Texas towns too small to show up on the map. May the God they fear stay with the few survivors as they try to secure tourniquets on their mangled limbs. Dallas' best hope is that the polluted waters of the Trinity River will make her too sluggish to fully devour downtown.

Some be relieved to see that, between the Houston Chronicle piece on Monday and the most recent ping this morning, Katherine has turned back eastward. But this merely suggests that Katherine saw the news coverage and temporarily altered her course in hopes of preserving the element of surprise -- either that, or she waylaid the crew of a passing merchant vessel and attached her tracking device to the suddenly crew-less ship, which is drifting leisurely toward Florida.

The time for evacuation is now. North Dakota is probably the safest destination, as the people there are disagreeable to a shark's palate. Waiting it out and sheltering in place is for fools.

Send your story tips to the author, Eric Nicholson.

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LJT2

She's coming for the groundbreaking of the Dallas Maritime Museum no doubt.

roo_ster

I'll be down by Lock & Dam #2, waiting for Katherine to show up.

I bet she would approach the old spillway and then circle back around a few times by the third-gen Chevy C-10 stuck in the river bottom. Her last circuit, she would likely go all-out in an attempt to jump the spillway and menace all the Dallasites up-Trinity.

That is when I would take a bead on her with my .375 H&H Loudenboomer rifle and turn her into future shark steaks. With the help from a few local buddies, we could recover the carcass and carve her up into some good eats. Yum, shark grilled over pecan wood.

I thought about just letting her go on up the Trinity and chew on some of the Dallas City Council-connected kayakers at The Wave. But my sense of humanity asserted itself and I figured it a kindness to kill her before she would have to face such slime-trail-leaving invertebrates. Or be forced to swallow her pride and let them be due to professional courtesy.

shawn4848

PLEASE PLEASE Mr Shark...will you gobble up and crap out into the ocean ALL THE HOMOSEXUALS?? What a great world we could have without the gays and their disgusting butt backwards choice of lifestyle....

wadeverrrr

$20 it don't make it pass sabine pass before it caught an eaten no.....

wadeverrrr

20 dollars it don't make it pass Morgan city before it caught cooked an eaten no.

CogitoErgoSum topcommenter

Yeah right. Sharks can't get to Dallas. (locks door and hides under bed)

halldecker

Land shark, Candygram. You realize, some high percentage of the people reading this have no idea what we're mumbling about? (Don't tell 'em, either!)

WaitWhat

Candygram.

dbackes

I think she will take out New Orleans again like she did in 2005!

TheRuddSki topcommenter

Katherine will likely turn around or head south when she encounters the Mississippi runoff and dead zone.

veruszetec

HIDE YO KIDS HIDE YO WIFE
NOTHIN GON' STOP DA GREAT WHITE

jswilson64

If she enters Texas territorial waters, I hope she has a visa. We don't want no illegal sharks 'round here.

ColonelAngus

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

wcvemail

You had a good energy drink this afternoon, Eric.

Theme music, besides the obvious "Jaws" dum-dum:
"Fins" (Jimmy Buffet)

Anything by Dennis Quaid and The Sharks

Anything by Great White (except songs requiring pyrotechnics)

ozonelarryb

Probably headed to Columbia Packing. If we get confirmation, be a good tiem to hold a Council meeting at the Trinity toll road site.

becoolerifyoudid

You are no Gavin Cleaver.

emoontastic

@shawn4848 YOU are a joke that sucks...You need real HELP...You are a TRUE ASSHOLE and it would be a Wonderful Place with out your kind of small and smaller minds. I pray you never give birth, would hope Mr. Shark finds your ass!!!!

WaitWhat

@halldecker Just a friendly dolphin.

dingo

@TheRuddSki

The big sharks in the gulf (mostly tiger sharks rather than great whites) more likely hang out where that last ping was located, out from Port St. Joe Peninsula.

There are some tiger sharks in the town of Port St. Joe also:

http://psjhs-gcs-fl.schoolloop.com/tigersharks

observist topcommenter

@jswilson64 Spoken like a true Jet.

wcvemail

Oh! and "Little Pink Houses" (John Mellencamp) with the line "and vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico"

TheRuddSki topcommenter

@dingo

No-one from Indianapolis vacations at Pt St Joe.

wcvemail

@observist

You just earned extra credit, payable in 1961 -- in 1961 currency and actually in 1961, so you'll just have to figure out how to time-travel to claim it.

James_the_P3

@TheRuddSki Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like ol' squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.

Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He's a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.