Carnivorousness

If you come in my cage I'll eat you too!

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

On stingrays

I love stingrays. When my sister and I finished our Openwater I dive course, we drove down to Santa Barbara California to take a dive boat tour to the Channel Islands. We traveled to the dive spot that night while we slept on the boat. When we woke up we ate breakfast and jumped in the water. The first thing my sister and I saw were 2 beautiful large Bat Rays swimming past us as if they were flying. Awesomely beautiful rays, with big eyes. We were in heaven. We both looked at each other in pure joy. After our dive we said that we felt like we had been missing this all our lives. We went ahead and got OpenWater II certification.

Often when I am down by the beach near where I live, I see stingrays that have been caught by fishermen who are afraid of them and do not release them back into the water. They would only have to cut the line, but they prefer to let them die. many times they chop off their tails. My dog will roll in a dead stingray carcass if given a chance, he once draged me over a cliff to do so. I am always sad to see the stingrays wasted, because they are actually very delicious when cooked. Their wings make fine chowder. When the wing meat is sliced off, the cartilage is visible. The cartilage is beautiful and very high tech looking, like computer circuitry.

Every year around Father's Day, stingrays mate in the lagoon near my house, swimming close to the surface for a change and thier wings flip above the surface and many people watching think the rays are dangerous sharks. One time an older lady asked me what was going on and when I said the rays were mating, she said, "Well at least someone is getting some on Father's Day!"

Once when I caught a stingray in the ocean, it lay flipped upside down in the boat making choking sounds which reminded me of a human baby. I ate it, tis true, but I felt sorry for it.

I am sorry that Steve Irwin has been killed by a ray, because it has created bad press for an animal already maligned. I have never been one for handling sea creatures. I do not pet the moray eels. I don't let the dive guides put octopi on me or stroke sharks. I wouldn't like it if aliens landed and started grabbing me, so I afford sea creatures the same courtesy. Having lived in San Diego, where there were many rays in the shallows at the beach, I always do the stingray shuffle, dragging my feet along the bottom.

4 Comments:

At 5:22 PM , Blogger D.B. Shobrawy said...

I'll tell you what I find funny. Sting Rays have such a good reputation that when I heard Steve Irwin was killed by one I couldnt believe it. (I may have even laughed a little)"The guy who wrestles croocadiles was killed by a sting ray?" I'll tell you though, if I'm swimming next to a sting ray I'll be a little scared now.

 
At 7:01 PM , Blogger John Doe said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At 7:01 PM , Blogger John Doe said...

I didn't know that those animals can kill a person till I heard the news. Nice to know it.

 
At 9:18 AM , Blogger Miss Carnivorous said...

Thanks Donkey!! Well, the stingray that killed Irwin probably did it because he did not want a man, the worlds greatest predator, swimming so close to him. Just good sense is all! Sho, if they come up on land and start killing us, I will be scared! J.Doe, do the shuffle and as I have told you before, don't molest the sea creatures.

 

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