Draft horses. Dairy cows. Racing pigs. They’re all animals you’d expect to find at the Champlain Valley Fair. But this year, a surprising aquatic addition has joined the barnyard menagerie: a trio of nurse sharks.
At 12:30 p.m. on Monday, spectators lined metal bleachers in a shady corner of the Essex Junction fairgrounds in advance of the first of three “Live Shark Encounter” shows of the day. The sharks, sporting whisker-like appendages that resembled fangs, floated languidly on the bottom of a long, rectangular tank, as Muzak versions of Bob Marley tunes played from speakers.
“That’s crazy,” one school-age kid said when he spotted the animals.
“Those are some big fish, huh?” an older man asked his companion.
“These aren’t the big white sharks,” a woman said, a tinge of disappointment in her voice.
Felipe Velarde of California — the show’s energetic, wet suit-clad host — was there to set the record straight. Nurse sharks, among the most common shark species, aren’t as aggressive as great whites. But, he said, the bottom-dwellers attack when provoked.
That didn’t stop Velarde from donning a scuba mask and jumping into the tank.
Speaking through an underwater microphone, he introduced the animals. In their earlier lives, 7-year-old Rosita lived in a bathtub in Mazatlán, Mexico; 9-year-old Abby resided in a Florida aquarium’s touch tank; and 11-year-old “big boy” Jimmy, measuring around six and a half feet long, was kept at a cancer research center in Texas.
Before getting out of the tank, Velarde retrieved a serrated shark tooth from the bottom, then handed it over to a kid in the stands.
Everyone else could have one, too, Velarde told the audience: “You just got to climb in there and get it yourself.”
“Live Shark Encounter” runs daily through September 2 at the Champlain Valley Fair. Shows are at 12:30, 2:30 and 7 p.m. near the fairground’s yellow gate.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2023.
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