here's a mystery for the ages:  this past june 27, while walking near a high school in Hesperia, California (located 35 miles north of San Bernardino, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles), two friends discovered a four-foot shark had been dumped in an empty field:

this is the shark found in the desert

    strange, that ... finding a shark in the Mojave Desert.   at any rate, the local newspaper's theory is that someone caught the shark while fishing, brought it home, let it lose in a pool, and the shark died from the chlorine.

  now, i am not sherlock holmes, but the above-scenario has several problems, chief among them: if someone can keep a shark alive and bring it home from a fishing trip, surely they know enough about sharks to know that swimming in a pool will kill it.

  no, no .... we have a more nefarious motive at work here, methinks.  so far, these are my two leading candidates:

   1. someone had been keeping the shark in an aquarium, and for whatever reason, the shark died. or perhaps the shark was allowed to die, due to financial problems, an impending move, who knows what ... for whatever reason, a home aquarist has a dead shark in his or her hands.  what to do?  dump it in the empty field.

  2. someone caught the shark while fishing and brought it home to have it stuffed.  finding how much it cost (holy &*%%$*) they thought better of it and dumped the shark.  or perhaps they found out from the taxidermist that it was illegal to have such sharks stuffed.... again, panic (holy %(^&^))$) and a quick dump.

  whatever the reason, one hopes karma comes back to bite the perpretators of this hineous deed.