Shark dumped on Australian
newspaper's doorstep
Journalists have a lot to be
nervous about lately: layoffs, furloughs, newspaper closures. But
reporters at an Australian paper may have received the scariest
threat of the day when a live shark was left on their doorstep.
Police said the two-foot creature was spotted early Wednesday by a
man who was leaving a McDonald's restaurant next door to the
offices of The Standard in the small Victoria state town of
Warrnambool.
When police arrived, the animal _
believed to be a relatively harmless Port Jackson shark _ was still
breathing, Warrnambool police Sgt. Tom Revell said
Thursday.
So officers borrowed a bucket of
water from McDonald's, placed the shark inside it and drove to a
nearby pier, where they released the creature back into the
ocean.
But why would someone dump a shark
outside the newspaper?
"We've got no idea why," Revell
said.
Nor does the newspaper's chief of
staff, Glen Bernoth, who learned of the bizarre incident in a
middle-of-the-night phone call from a friend who'd heard about it
on his police scanner.
"Naturally, I assumed it was like
some sort of prank or something, but I'd been asleep for a couple
hours," Bernoth said with a laugh Thursday.
There are a couple of theories on
the motive: Some readers were angered by a photograph the newspaper
recently ran on its front page featuring a man who caught a large
reef shark. Those upset by the photo didn't believe the creature
should have been caught.
Another possibility, Bernoth says,
is that the offering is somehow related to the local football club
_ named the Sharks.
"But that's just a stab in the
dark," he said. "At the moment, we're sitting tight desperately
hoping something will be revealed."