A real survivor

15-year-old shark-attack victim Lulu Gribbin has been alert and talking with visitors, including Matthew Lidle, the man who carried her back to the beach after the shark bit off a hand and injured a leg so badly it had to be amputated, reports AL.com’s Carol Robinson.

Lulu, who’s from Mountain Brook, is one of three victims from two attacks on Friday along the Gulf Coast in Walton County, Fla. Her friend, 16-year-old McCray Faust, was also bitten but did not have extensive injuries.

Lidle said he took Lulu from a man who was helping keep her away from the shark. He took her back to the beach, where at least two doctors and a nurse were nearby and able to treat her as best they could before she was life-flighted to Pensacola.

After speaking with her, Lidle said he was surprised how well she sounded. “I was so glad to hear she was alive because after seeing that, I wasn’t sure,’’ he said.

More on the shark(s)

AL.com’s Lawrence Specker spoke with Sean Powers, who’s the director of the University of South Alabama’s Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences, a senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, and considered one of Alabama’s top marine scientists.

We’ll never have proof whether the same shark was involved in both of Friday’s attacks, which occurred about 90 minutes and four miles apart. But even given this unlikely scenario, Powers said he believes it’s more likely that feeding conditions just happened to be similar so that the predators were aggressively chasing baitfish into the shallows.

He said that despite Friday’s rare and scary events, there doesn’t seem to be a trend to be concerned about. As a matter of fact, he thought with more people going to Gulf Coast beaches and government efforts to rebuild the shark population, it’s surprising that attacks haven’t risen more than they have.

I know somebody just heard “government efforts to rebuild the shark population” and thought, “What next, government? Killer bees?” But, of course, the predator sharks play an important role in the Gulf’s ecological balance. Lawrence asked Powers about that, and Powers gave the example of too few predator sharks causing the cownose and stingray populations to skyrocket, in turn leading to shellfish and shrimp populations to decline (not to mention the less-than-desirable carpet of stingrays in the surf).

Don’t track your ex, guys

A law passed just last year was used to lock up a man who’s accused of placing a tracking device on his ex-wife’s vehicle, reports AL.com’s Carol Robinson.

It’s a good idea to be aware of this law, especially if you have control issues or a jealous bone. Technology being what it is, we’re likely to see more folks ending up on the wrong side of this one.

The relatively new law makes it illegal to place a tracking device on the property of another person.

In this week’s case, a 43-year-old Enterprise man has been charged with second-degree domestic violence/stalking and first-degree electronic stalking. Dothan police said the man had sent threatening texts or made phone calls to the victim more than 50 times over eight days. They also said that the victim looked at her home surveillance video and saw her ex crawl out from underneath her vehicle, and that’s when she found the tracking device.

The man is being held without bond in the Houston County Jail.

Take it, Reefers

A little while after Jimmy Buffett passed away, the Parrotheads among us — and I know many of you are in their ranks — while grieving the loss of a hero also lamented never getting to see a finale of a live show.

And maybe there isn’t one. Or maybe there’s one going on this summer.

Parrotheads on social media have heavily debated whether there can be a next-best-thing event to make what has become a pilgrimage for many to Buffett concerts. Could there be a stand-in for Buffett, like a Kenny Chesney? Or a rotation of all-star men and women to front the Coral Reefer Band? Or do you just shut it down and keep the memories?

The answer, at least for now, is that the Coral Reefer Band itself is doing a handful of tribute shows over the summer, reports AL.com’s Lawrence Specker. And one will be at The Wharf Amphitheater in Orange Beach.

Of course, there are singers in that band. And a couple of members, like Buffett, are from Alabama. Mac MacAnally of Red Bay is a fan-favorite, award-winning guitarist and singer and a songwriter on many Buffett pieces. And Will Kimbrough of Mobile has played with the Reefers and is another of Buffett’s favorite songwriting buddies.

Others include steel-drums player Robert Greenidge, who goes back with the band to the early 80s, and pedal-steel player Doyle Grisham, who goes all the way back to 1974 with the band. Backup singers Nadirah Shakoor and Tina Gullickson have sang with Buffet for about three decades.

The Coral Reefers will play the Wharf on Thursday, Aug. 1. Tickets go on sale Friday on Ticketmaster.

Quoting

“The catalyst for this was the decision handed down by the Alabama Supreme Court that stated that life in the state of Alabama had to begin at fertilization. We mean when the sperm and the egg meet and God says, ‘Let there be life.’”

The Rev. Albert Mohler, a Samford University graduate and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, calling on Southern Baptists to stand against discarding human embryos in IVF treatments.

More Alabama News

Born on This Date

In 1904, Early boogie-woogie pianist Pinetop Smith, born in Troy and raised in Birmingham. He was shot and killed in Chicago at age 24. The record “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” was a huge influence on that strain of music, which in turn was a big part of what would become rock and roll.

The podcast

We have more on the road that led UAB Hospital to stop performing state prison autopsies.

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