I only remember doing one dissection in High School biology -- any of the biology classes, actually. I mean, I have vague memories of pushing on the tendons of chicken wings to make them move and of taking pictures for the yearbook of the fourth graders dissecting a pig's heart, but I don't remember dissecting any whole animals, even in AP biology.
Except for the shark.
Marine Biology senior year was icing. I'd taken my 3 years of science courses, including AP Bio, so it was one of the many courses senior year that I took because they were interesting and it made more sense to have a full schedule than to finish High School a year early without trying. (As it was, I didn't actually NEED any of the credits from my second semester to graduate with the highest diploma in any case. I could have just stopped in December. But why would I?) The point is, it was a fun class, with a unique set up. And then for one of his projects, a classmate -- lets call him G -- decided to bring in a shark for us to dissect.
It was a black-tipped reef shark, a little over 5 feet long, if I remember correctly. His uncle had shot it with a spear gun when he was out night diving and spear fishing and it had caught onto the smell of his catch and started circling underneath him. It was territorial, and he was nervous about the fact that he was trailing fish blood behind him, so when it got to close, he shot it. He took it home and put the whole thing in the freezer, before G brought it to class.
It was beautiful. Sharks are, anyway -- sleek and powerful and graceful. But I remember feeling the rough skin -- all the little tiny teeth that make it like sandpaper if you rub it the wrong way. And its real teeth, of course. We laid it on its back and cut it open down the middle, having misidentified its anal fins as claspers. We thought it was male.
And then we opened it up and there were two embryos, a little over a foot long each. We washed the blood off of them and they were perfect little pups. They were unmarked, their grey and black colors so clear and unmarred by life. They had little tiny teeth. Had G's uncle known, he could have probably cut them out and set them free and they could have survived -- they were ready to be born. This, of course, also explained their mother's territorial actions.
There was something heartbreakingly sweet and lovely about them.
And as I said at the top, I have no idea what is bringing them to mind on this day when I have oodles of things to do and responsibilities to fulfill. Perhaps something in the first-year papers I'm grading sparked off some kind of association with innocence, though my students usually do their best to deny and hide any innocence they have remaining and put up blusters that they are older and more worldly-wise than they actually are. Perhaps those pups were a good metaphor for my students: innocent, beautiful, some-times heartbreaking -- but ultimately sharks.
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