One evening last week, my wife and I walked out to the beach to watch the sunset on the Gulf of Mexico. Though we missed the main event, a blaze of orange ignited the western horizon, reflecting in the calm waters of the Gulf. As the intense color waned, the sky faded from pale blue to a metal gray and Venus, the "Evening Star" appeared in the western sky; Jupiter, less bright but no less inspiring, glowed high to the southwest.
Catching the last reflections from the evening sky, the Gulf became a sheet of gray and low waves, backlit by the fading dusk, moved toward the shore like a series of black bars. Ghost crabs scurried across the beach while the last flocks of gulls and egrets passed overhead, on their way to nocturnal roosts. The soft break of waves, disrupted only by the occasional squawk of a night heron, enhanced the serenity.
But just as the final glimmer of sunlight retreated below the horizon, something thrashed in the shallows. A ray or sand shark had apparently struck its target; the night hunters had begun their shift. It was time for us humans, ill equipped to function in the dark, to retreat to the condo.
