It’s been Drama Week in Mark Trail! In case you don’t recall (after spending a week with Rusty the Raccoon King), the Trail-Getz wedding ceremony began to fall apart like the First Little Pig’s house of straw when a gorilla suddenly collapsed (a “young female western lowland gorilla” according to Mark). Mark called for the ceremony to halt as he ran to investigate. Gail kept yelling to keep the ceremony going while Happy wavered between his desire to continue and his longtime concern for animals. The fact that Gail wasn’t cooperating should have been a big clue.

Moving on to this past week, the ambulance Mark called for arrived. Happy finally put animal welfare above his personal ambition (who would have guessed!?) and left an irate Gail standing at the altar as he ran over to assist. A police car also rolled up at this point (who called him?), which initiated a conversation with Happy and a request to talk with Gail.

Mark—apparently not yet helping the attendants—was standing near Niecy and wondering where Gail and Guyer had gotten to. Sometimes Mark is slow on the uptake, but not Gail and Guyer, who are experienced con artists and knew it was time to split. So they sped off in the “wedding vehicle” (complete with tin cans tied to the rear). Mark saw them fleeing and wanted to chase after them. I thought this was odd, given that he did not try to stop the wedding or call the cops on Gail beforehand. But Niecy reminded Mark that his biodiesel station wagon had no chance in hell of catching up. Therefore, he turned his attention to helping with the gorillas.

We have at least another week for this story. It will be interesting to see how this story plays out. Before Rivera started, this story might simply have cut back to Mark being at home in Lost Forest, summarizing the expurgated details to Cherry. As this strip is about enjoying and protecting nature and animals, we should expect to see the gorillas being treated at the animal hospital (educational!) and observe Gail and Guyer being led off in handcuffs (justice!).

Yes, most all sharks must keep moving to obtain oxygen, giving rise to the observation that sharks do not sleep. Apparently, most sharks go into some kind of near-sleep stasis, while moving much more slowly. But some sharks are able to remain immobile, at least for a time. A 2022 Smithsonian article cited a study that demonstrated that the Draughtsboard Shark is one species that can remain stationary and enter a sleep state. Some sharks can remain motionless or near motionless when resting, such as the whitetip reef shark, the Caribbean reef shark, the nurse shark, the wobbegong, and the lemon shark. This has to do with a different biological function that forces water through the gills so oxygen can be extracted.