TV `lesson' saved boy from shark

An 11-year-old boy who was bitten by a shark off the Gulf of Mexico learned how to fight off the beast – by punching it in the gills – from watching television.

“I was watching TV the day before and I saw that on the Discovery Channel,” Aaron Perez said today.

A surgeon at Memorial Hermann Children’s Hospital in Houston spent more than four hours reattaching the boy’s arm after last weekend’s attack.

Aaron’s father, Blas Perez, said the boy was wading in a school of trout at a beach near Freeport, Texas, when the attack occurred.

“Aaron picked fish up and he turned around to tell me, and when he did that the shark was right there and the dogfight was on,” he said.

Freeport Fire Chief John Stanford said the animal was a bull shark, which is aggressive and swims in shallow water.

The boy’s father and a family friend separated the boy from the shark by hitting it with their fishing rods.

“I’ve never been that violent in my life,” Perez said.