It landed with a ‘big thud’ in her Sea Pines courtyard. Did a shark just fall from the sky?
A shark falling from the sky sounds like the plot of a movie on the Sci-Fi Channel. In Hilton Head, resident Valerie Pallitta’s case, it might be a reality. Though, experts say it’s most likely a catfish that fell in her Sea Pines home’s courtyard.
During an April downpour, more than just rain fell on her property. She said bald eagles dropped a two-foot long dead shark into her courtyard.
“I hear this big thud, and my dogs went crazy,” she said. The video Pallitta took is grainier quality than the actual ‘Sharknado’ movies. It’s blurry and difficult to see details of what the fish looks like.
It shows a gray fish laying with bloody talon marks inside her fenced-in courtyard and birds sitting in a tree above. Pallitta said she saw one adolescent eagle with brown feathers and one mature bald eagle with white feathers and yellow beak.
“I opened the door and I’m like, ‘Is that a fish?’ and then I’m like, ‘Oh my god, it’s a shark,” she said. “As soon as I opened the door, I could smell it.”
Pallitta, who has lived on Hilton Head for 30 years, said she thought it was a shark because of it’s flat head. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources shark biologist Bryan Frazier said it’s probably a catfish.
He said the proportions are generally wrong on the front half of the fish because no pectoral, or side, fins are evident. The second back, or dorsal, fin looks larger than the first, which doesn’t occur in any shark species, according to Frazier.
He also said the tail looks more like that of a fish.
“If it was a shark, the only possible species would be a lemon shark, and their young won’t be born until next month,” Frazier said, explaining that he’s 95% sure the fish isn’t a shark.
Pallitta called her neighbor, Jim Paris, to help move the fish.
“(The birds) couldn’t figure out how to get the fish out of my courtyard because their wingspan is so big,” she said. “They would have to helicopter in over the fence.”
Paris said he moved it with a shovel to their street where a swarm of birds, but not the bald eagles, picked at it until it was gone.
“I rescued her from a shark,” he laughed.
Due to the poor video quality, DNR bird conservation coordinator Amy Tegeler was unable to tell what the birds were, but said that bald eagles eat fish and generally don’t discriminate by species.
“Bald eagles are more likely to eat fish that are near the surface of the water since they don’t dive,” Tegeler said. “They will also pick up sick (or) dead fish that were just floating.”
