A couple of guys with goatees plus one woman stole a shark from a Texas aquarium on Monday by passing it off as a baby. “Oh, this 3-foot long thing with fins that’s dripping wet and trying to eat the stroller? This is our child. Her name is Terri, she’s teething,” they probably said.
The San Antonio Express-News did not report why the trio decided to steal the gray horn shark from its tank at the San Antonio Aquarium, but I guess that’s really none of our business. Leon Valley Police Chief Joseph Salvaggio told the paper that “Some guy just basically grabbed a shark out of the tank, put it in a baby stroller and left.” Some real Ocean’s Eleven shit, amirite? (I am.)
Police said the shark heist occurred around 3 p.m., with one of the mustaches grabbing its tail while the other two wrapped it in a wet blanket. Then they put the whole dripping bundle in stroller and pushed it out to the parking lot, where they hopped in a truck and just drove away.
Horribly, the aquarium didn’t even notice the shark was missing for a full 45 minutes, though they did eventually catch the predators and recovered the shark. It’s still alive, though experts say its prognosis is grim.
“If it’s out of the water for 10 minutes and not put into another tank, then it’s going to be physiologically compromised for sure,” Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told the paper.
Salvaggio, the police chief, added that authorities believed the shark was taken from a petting pool. Those things seem horrifically inhumane—what animal enjoys being jabbed by the ungainly fingers of the greasy, diseased masses day in and day out, to say nothing of the threat of being stolen? Ban them.