NZ MONTAUK MONSTER?

Just in: another strange carcass found on a beach; this time in Gisbourne, North Island, New Zealand.

It was found a day or so back by bloggo correspondent and doyen of NZ Cryptozoology, Tony Lucas.

You must admit that it looks considerably freakier than the Montauk Monster, with a weird ratlike tail and a fleshy protuberant nose.

In our opinion it is no placental mammal known to science.
This time it certainly ain't a dead racoon that had been given a Viking Burial by a bunch of stoned surfers. It was, by the way "about the size of a fox terrier" says Tony.

Watch this space. More later....

MONTAUK MONSTER REVEALED

It all started with a mealy mouthed story from Fox News, who probably have not forgiven me for my social faux pas in making a Charles Manson joke to one of their reporters whilst on camera and (I think) live TV. In a typically mealy mouthed way they reported that the blog of some dude called Drew Grant's, "which has a not-safe-for-work name we won't repeat", has just solved the mystery of the Montauk Monster.

Being a juvenile cove, I was intrigued. Was the blog called C*****F*****erx or Po****%^&* Merchants, or even N******Scum***H****? Nope it was called "AssMe.org" which was obviously the person in charge comparing himself to the domesticated subspecies of an equid called Equus africanus (or possibly a related species).

I really don't know what the fuss is.


I don't know who Drew Grant is either, but he tells a very convincing story of how the Montauk Monster, with strange bandage like ties around the extremities of its limbs, ended up on Montauk Beach.

It was surfer dudes with a peculiar sense of humour.

Cowabunga!!

Last summer, apparently three unnamed surfers were "goofing off 15 miles west of Montauk, on a beach on shelter island. It was the weekend before July 4th, and the trio were making a raft and putting all sorts of debris on it, just for fun: watermelons, scraps of cloth, plastic swimmie duck, etc. When suddenly one of the guys finds a dead raccoon half-buried in the sand.


Now, my friend isn’t the type to take dead animals and set them on fire and float them off in the sea (he’s vegan), but, in his words, “this creature was honored with a Viking funeral, not merely exploited for crass entertainment.” Basically, though, they were just being dumb. “In the interest of full disclosure,” he admits, “this did happen shortly after a waterboarding endurance competition, and just before a clothespins-on-your-genitals challenge."

If we are to believe this account, which does - admittedly - have a ring of truth about it, then there is also pictorial evidence. Drew published these "photos which clearly show the scraps tied to the dead raccoon’s feet that were seen in the later photographs of the heinous beast", and concludes that "It wasn’t a viral marketing stunt at all, but just some kids setting fire to a dead animal and then pushing it off to sea with a watermelon and some floatie wings."

Seems fair enough to me. It also seems like the sort of dumb thing I would have done at that age, and probably when I was considerably older. I don't think I would ever have done the clothespegs thing tho...

MONTAUK MONSTER II: And this one has a Penis

Last summer the fortean world was shocked by the advent of a strange naked, bloated corpse on a beach near the Montauk business district of New York. It became known as `The Montauk Monster` and for some reason that completely escapes me, provoked an almost unparallelled Internet feeding frenzy. Richard and I took a quick look at it, identified it as a badly decomposed small carnivore, and promptly forgot about it. We didn't even bother to include it in Animals & Men.

This, as it turned out, was a bad move. Dr Daz, who correctly identified it as a genetic mutant lifeform back engineered from material recovered from the Roswell crash - no, sorry, as a decomposing racoon had a staggering 50,000 hits a day on TetZoo, and other internet crypto pundis were equally popular. Muggins here just totally ignored it and wen on with organising the Weird Weekend.

However, it has happened again, and this time with a twist: the external genitals of the unfortunate creature are clearly visible, and you don't know how difficult it is not to be crude at this point, especially as - like the rest of the creature - they are swollen by putrefaction. There are a dozen Alien Sex Fiend jokes jus itching to come out, but we have a family
audience, and I must resist temptation. Thank God Freeman's not here.

Retrieverman over in West Virginia has one of my favourite blogs of the moment, and I will leave it to him to carry on the story, more tastefully than I...

http://wildlifemysteries.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/another-dessicated-raccoon-washed-up-on-the-b/

FAIRY PHOTOGRAPH: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

Last summer someone emailed me a copy of the photograph on the left. I took a cursory look at it. It's a dead cat, I thought. I showed it to Richard Freeman who agreed, and then promptly forgot about it.

Some bright spark in the fortean/crypto community dubbed it `The Montauk Monster` (which is particularly silly because there is nothing the slightest bit monstrous about it) because it had been washed up near Montauk, New York in July.

The only thing that mildly interested me about it was that it was alleged in certain quarters that it had come from Plum Island, home of the U.S.Government animal diseases research facility. This only interested me because at the time I was being mildly obsessive and reading all of Nelson deMille's thrillers in order, and one of them was set on (and named after) Plum Island.

However, we basically ignored it, considering it to be a non-story. The mystery was solved by our old mate Dr Daz at Tetrapod Zoology who had got tired of the media furore surrounding it, and correctly identified it as a dead racoon, bloated by putrefecation. However, as he admits bewildered during the days when he was covering that story his daily hits increased something like tenfold, proving that people can get ridiculously obsessed over nonsense.

Now, this picture hit the headlines a couple of weeks ago, and somehow we overlooked it. However it turned up in our inbox this morning with someone claiming that it is the image of a "fairy". The picture, by the way, was allegedly taken at La Pampa in Argentina in early January.

Hmmmmmmm.

We did a bit of searching, and the Daily Telegraph covered this on January 14th, writing:

"According to the uncorroborated story that accompanies the picture on dozens of cryptozoology websites and blogs, the photographer spotted the fast-moving "being" but was only able to take a single photo before it flew away.

He reportedly sent the photo to local UFO study group which decided it showed a creature of "high strangeness" and forwarded it on to the police.

The blurb with the picture claims that officers used high-tech equipment to enhance the image, revealing that the animal had eye sockets and a beak. The special criminal division estimated that the creature could be up to 2ft 7 in tall, it is claimed. But the story have been met with scepticism among experienced photographers, who point out that it would be impossible to tell the size of the object without knowing how close it was to the camera. More mundane and plausible theories include that the photo is a long exposure shot of a bird, or an insect that flew too close to the camera. "

Well I remember from Peter Pan what happened to Tinkerbell when people say that they don't believe in fairies, but to my eyes this is almost certainly a blurry picture of a bird. It's got a beak for heaven's sake!

Over to you guys...