Andrea Lehman

“I Poem”

 

I am a dwarf lantern shark.

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Out of the 500 kinds of sharks,

 

I’m the smallest,

so small I could fit in your hand,

if you’re not too scared to hold me.

 

Don’t shiver and shake,

I would never hurt you, unless

I thought your finger was

my favorite food- SHRIMP!

 

I’m warning you though, stay away from

the Great White, Bull, and Tiger sharks-

they just sound scary, huh?

But even with those monsters lurking in the ocean,

only six of you are killed every year by sharks.

 

There are lots of different sharks

swimming in the big blue.

Some of them I would consider weird.

Like the Swell shark-

he blows up like a balloon and gets himself

stuck between rocks so nobody will eat him.

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Kinda clever actually!

 

I have lights on my belly so enemies

can’t see me swimming about them.

Tricky huh?

 

And the Wobbegong shark-

you know he’s crazy with a name like that.

He’s as flat as a pancake and

lays on the ocean floor to catch his prey.

I’ll tell you about one more, even though

I’m scared of him, so keep this quiet.

He’s about 12 ½ feet bigger than me,

 and his head looks like a tool-

you guessed it, the Hammerhead shark.

 

Even though I’m the little guy,

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I’m a lot like the others.

 

If we were human, we’d live at the Dentist office!

We can have up to 3000 teeth in rows and

we go through about 20,000 in our lives.

All of us have jaws like rubber bands

that shoot out to catch our prey.

And we have bones made of cartilage,

so we are very bendy!

 

We breath water through our gills, not air like you.

And when we swim, water goes

in our nose and brings in the savory smells of food-

which we are always on the lookout for.

 

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I am tiny and have sensitive skin, but

 

remember that I have a brain and feelings.

I don’t want to become a statistic.

Did you know you guys kill over

100 million sharks every year?

You make aftershave, cattle feed,

skin cream, and shark-fin soup from us.

I understand, because I’m a predator too,

but spare me please.

I am a dwarf lantern shark.

 

 

 

NCSCOS 4th Grade Goal and Objective:

Goal 1, Objective 1.02:  Observe & record how animals of the same kind differ in some of their characteristics & discuss possible advantages & disadvantages of this variation.

 

*Information from: Surprising Sharks, by Nicola Davies