“It’s their domain, not mine. The dolphins won –
and I’m ok with that.”
Australian surfers are well aware of shark
dangers all along their fatal shore. Man-eating beasts
stopping at nothing to taste human flesh, government officials even
sometimes accused of aiding and abetting the pillage. But a new,
heretofore not imagined, horror has presented in the form of the
friendly dolphin.
But let us not tarry. Let us hustle to Emerald Beach, midway up
the New South Welsh coast where the tradesman Eli Anderson, 20, was
enjoying a surf at the very end of December. Weather hot, sun
shining, disaster lurking. A pod of 2o, or so, dolphins was out
fishing and went food berserk, catching the almost young man up in
their frenzy.
“They came from nowhere and one of their fins sliced my board,”
he declared to the universally appreciated Daily Mail
Australia. “I was knocked off and then knocked out so
I don’t remember much until I was washed up on to the beach. As I
came around, I started to count my limbs and checked for blood. I
was in a lot of pain but also so confused, because I thought it
must have been a shark attack.”
While his limbs were intact, his pelvis was not.
Busted at the seam.
His father, mercifully, was on the beach after catching a wave
in and shared that he had seen sharks in the area before but “never
thought dolphins would be a problem.”
The pelvis break, anyhow, will take two weeks to heal and the
young-ish Anderson is expecting to get back in the water
directly.
“It’s taken me a long time to process it really, but nothing
could stop me surfing,” he said. “It’s their domain, not mine. The
dolphins won – and I’m ok with that.”
A few questions I have about this wild tale. Two, actually.
1. I have seen folk getting knocked out and washed up on shore
in movies but have never read about it happening in real life. Is
possible without drowning?
2. A crumbled pelvis only takes two weeks to heal?
More as the story develops.
