By Ben Dickison, Sports Editor

In tropical Hendersonville, North Carolina, a genetic labyrinth has been laid out. Charlotte, a 12-to-14 year old stingray is pregnant with four little rays of sunshine. However– she doesn’t share a tank with any male stingrays. Just two strapping young sharks, Mo and Larry, who were not previously thought to be sexually mature- but it now appears one of them may need kelp paying child support.

The pregnancy has made waves internationally, up to the point where Charlotte is having local news station WBTV-3 tied for “slander.”

On a recent taping of Judge Judy, set to release after the birth of Charlotte’s offspring, which is due to arrive any day now, Charlotte remarked, “I remember one night I was at bar in Cincinnati called Fishbowl. I met Larry and he was mewing and wearing a burberry trench coat. He offered to swim with me into a lemon drop shot and we talked about how we both live in Charlotte. At that point, I could barely sea his face from all the strobelights and I figured gills are gills. So we smooched a little bit and he offered to take me back to his ‘bachelor reef.’ But all we did is kiss, I swear.”

Charlotte could be pregnant as a result of a rare condition called parthenogenesis; this type of pregnancy occurs via asexual reproduction in which eggs are formed without fertilization, and produce an exact clone of their mother upon birth.

“I call bull-ship,” opened Alicia Keys, a world-renowned aquarius. She claims that the irresistible gaze of Charlotte inspired her to cover Billie Eilish’s hit “Ocean Eyes.” Keys believes that Charlotte may just be doing this all for fortune, or perhaps even all for fame. 

Charlotte has never been pregnant before, according to staff of the Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO, where she resides. It is also notably rare for stingrays to become pregnant by parthenogenesis. Mo and Larry’s mother, however, had given birth over fourteen times via the extremely rare occurrence.

In a curious attempt to hear from a primary source, I reached out to my father, the best “Ray” I know, for his insight on how this might have come about. He responded, “Ben– how in the beard of Zeus have you gotten five parking tickets in the last two weeks. Get a grip dude.”

`When reached out for comment, Mo, the bamboo shark, potential owner of paternity for Charlotte’s pups said, “Stinger? I barely know her.” Mo claims he never met Charlotte and his brother was tempted by the fishnets she donned on that fateful night out.

The world awaits as Charlotte reports cravings for pickles in peanut butter almost nightly.