COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

So much weirdness, so little time. It’s not every day you get stories about great white sharks and naked intruders around here in the same week. Continuing our animal theme, last week it was bees, this week it’s sharks, which are much larger than bees, not as yellow and can’t fly. They’re also a lot scarier, especially great white sharks, thanks to Steven Spielberg. As anyone who was conscious in 1975 knows that “Jaws” changed the world. People stopped taking baths, no one went to the beach until 1979, and if you pointed and screamed “What is that?” near a Jacuzzi, everyone jumped out of the water, some of them crying.

Flash forward 33 years. For the last few weeks, SoCal surfers have been on full buzz because surfers and swimmers up and down the coast said they saw and/or encountered a great white shark, which is not good, from Santa Monica to San Onofre, which is a lot of sand.

Tom Larkin, a surfer from Manhattan Beach who frequents Huntington and Bolsa Chica, is certain that a great white jostled him and took a nibble out of his board off Huntington earlier this month. Larkin paddled back in on his gnawed board and told the Los Angeles Times that he “proceeded to freak out in the parking lot. I don’t know what else it could have been.”

I don’t either, Tom, but people who know about these things, including Huntington Beach lifeguards, say pish tosh, or words to that effect. A great white shark is not unprecedented around here, but is very rarely close enough to shore to swim up and say hi to a nice new human friend. What’s more, if one of those spooky-looking dorsal fins popped up around here the lifeguards would know it, and neither the Orange County nor the Los Angeles tan people in the red trunks have seen any trace of a great white.

Alison Sheltrown, marketing manager for surfing website Surfline.com, told the L.A. Times that one should never underestimate how clever surfers can be. The rumors were probably planted, Sheltrown said, “to keep everyone out of the water because it’s spring break.”

So it looks like another case of don’t get crazy, just be careful. By the way, do you know how many people are killed every year in shark attacks? Wait, let me tell you. About four people are killed in unprovoked shark attacks around the world every year.

About twice that many people are killed after provoking or taunting a shark, in which case, I’m rooting for the shark. I’m not entirely sure why anyone would provoke a shark, but if someone insists on snuggling up and making faces at it or poking it in the snoot with a sharp object, I say the shark gets a free throw.

Speaking of acting like an idiot, Newport Beach police say an intruder entered two homes on Balboa Boulevard last week in the middle of the night. In each case, the man slipped through an unlocked door while the women, who lived alone, were sleeping. Police believe it was the same man in both incidents.

Both women awoke to find a man they described as 25 to 30 years old, 6-feet tall and 190 pounds in their bedroom.

Fortunately, when the women woke up, the intruder took off, which is also what he did to his clothes, oddly enough, when he got there. In each case, the intruder was standing there just about as naked as naked can be, with the exception of a beanie in one case and a beanie and socks in the other. That is so wrong.

Why would anyone wear a beanie? I can’t think of one good reason. OK, if you’re an elderly little Frenchman strolling the gardens at the Luxembourg Palace, maybe. Even then, I vote no on the beanie. But what look were we going for with the beanie and the socks? I have to know. Was it a disguise? Hope not.

If you’re going to scare people half to death in the middle of the night, naked, do you think they won’t be able to identify you in that get-up? And tell me this: How are you going to feel when they put you in a lineup with four other guys wearing nothing but beanies and socks? “No. 4, step forward, hands at your sides.” Are you proud of that? What a maroon.

That’s it then. Sharks that may or not have been there, and a naked intruder that was, but made bad choices on so many levels. I have no idea why people do the things they do. If you do, please contact me at your earliest convenience. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.