The Mystery of the “Unfriendly” Neighbor

Every morning, Mai would pass her neighbor’s fence with Chó, a German shepherd. For her, walking by Mr. Groll’s yard was the best part of their morning walk and also the worst. It was the best part because the roses along the way seemed to greet them through their scents, “Good morning, Chó,” “Hello, Mai!”. Then the worst part — the unfriendly shape nearby: Mr. Groll. Every time, Mai would offer a polite greeting to Mr. Groll, and Chó, being friendly, would thump (拍打) her tail. Typically, there was no response. Still, Mai knew he was there, watching behind his fence. He sounded out of breath, and the gate swung nervously in his hand.

“Why does Mr. Groll ignore me?” It remained a mystery to Mai. Was he afraid of her because she was blind? Disabilities sometimes scared grown-ups. Then Mai remembered: the previous day, she heard him playing with her friend Jimmy, who was in a wheelchair.

Maybe Mr. Groll didn’t like Vietnamese (越南的) neighbors. Some folks were said to dislike people from faraway places. No, that couldn’t be it. Every Saturday Mr. Groll and Mai’s big brother, Lien, helped each other with yard work. They were friends.

Well, then, Mai thought: “Maybe he doesn’t like me because I’m a girl.” Then she remembered her friend Jana. Mr. Groll would respond happily to her greeting. Mai’s heart twisted: “Mr. Groll likes Jimmy. And Lien. And Jana. But not me and Chó...”

“Me and Chó!” An idea brightened Mai’s mystery. Maybe she did know why Mr. Groll didn’t talk to her!

“Down,” Mai ordered, letting go of Chó’s harness (拴狗绳). Surprised, Chó flopped to the ground. Mai attached her harness to a post, and felt her way along the fence cautiously.

Shark attacks in U.S. waters—and how common they really are

The first American shark panic began in the hot summer of 1916, when a series of attacks of the Jersey Shore killed four in two weeks. This was thought to be the work of a single great white shark—a species native to the Atlantic coast and the same likely involved in recent attacks. In a time when little was known about beasts from the deep, the deaths were big news. One paper warned that, facing a scarcity of fish, the shark had “probably acquired a taste for human flesh.”

But 1916 did not start a new time of human-hunting sharks. The rate of attacks in the U.S. stayed relatively stable, at two or three per year, for decades. From the 1950s on, that number rose with human population growth, and its attendant increase of people in the water.

Globally, both numbers have been climbing faster since the late 1980s and into the 21st century, but such encounters with sharks are still remarkably uncommon given that the human population is some 7.5 billion. In 2017, 53 of the world’s 88 confirmed attacks took place on U.S. coastlines, with 31 in Florida - but even there, you’re far less likely to be killed by a shark than by lightning. Thanks to beach safety and hospital access, only five of last year’s global attacks were fatal.

“If sharks were actively hunting people, we’d see far more attacks,” says Gavin Naylor, director at the Florida Museum’s Program for Shark Research.

Statistically, sharks have far more to fear from us than we do from them—fisheries wipe out an estimated 100 million each year, and climate change and other human activity have threatened shark habitats, sending their global population into decline. But that doesn’t make it any less sad when the beasts bite back.