DOC SHIELS CUTTINGS

Tony Shiels sent this through yesterday. It appeared in the Western Morning News last week. Click on it to expand it so you can read it.

AT LAST - THE FULL KILLARNEY LAKES VIDEO

CORINNA DOWNES: Where do we go from here/is it down to the lake I fear?

Late afternoon, Thursday 17th September 2009. We (Jon Downes, Max Blake, Tony Shiels and I) stopped at the scenic view at Ladies View in Killarney National Park on the Ring of Kerry. It overlooks the three lakes – Lough Leane, Muckross Lake (also known as Middle Lake) and Upper Lake. It was a calm afternoon with not much breeze to speak of, and was slightly cloudy.

Tony Shiels told us that we should watch the Upper Lake. In the southeast corner of the lake there is an island – not too far off the shore – and I saw a trail left by something as it made its way from the island to the shore to the east of it, as can be clearly seen in the photos (Bottom Left). I have no idea whether this was a bird on the surface of the water or whether it was something from underneath.

As can be seen clearly in the photos (above) there is a rock in the lake to the west of this island and we used this as a marker. Suddenly there was movement near the rock and as far as I could tell by looking through my telephoto lens, there was nothing sitting on the rock that could have jumped in. However, there was a great deal of movement as can be seen in the photos.

A long straight movement was followed by circular movements before whatever had made them seemed to dive down again. In one of the photos you can clearly see a kind of torpedo trail as whatever it was submerged and made its way to the right of the original disturbance.

I am not sure what it was but am fairly convinced that it could not have been a bird. The fact that it clearly broke surface and then submerged leaving that torpedo trail – to me – ruled out that it could have been a bird. If it was a fish, it must have been a pretty big one because of the size of the disturbance and the distance involved from where we were standing.

I have no idea what it was that we saw but if I was to be pressed for an answer I would probably suggest a large eel.

We will be releasing the video in the next few days, but want to do a little bit more work first. The video is far more impressive than the photographs.

A ROUND-UP OF CO.KERRY LAKE MONSTER MATERIAL COURTESY OPF THE NEWSAGENT FROM NOWHERE

Richard Muirhead has done a sterling job hunting out lake monster material from Co. Kerry, some of which features Tony Shiels and other old friends; some of which doesn't:

http://blather.net/blather/2004/01/mucky_the_lake_monster_in_muck.html

January 9, 2004

Mucky the Lake Monster in Muckross Lake, Killarney, Co. Kerry

Posted by daev

The Irish Charr Conservation group reckon that they've found a strange creature in a Co. Kerry lake....

Jon, Corinna and Max arrive in Ireland

...Graham monitors the phone at CFZ Central

I’ve now prepared the means by which I can record phone conversations on my computer, but that wasn’t complete at the time of Jon’s initial call. The option to do that will be handy when any reports are phoned in from Sumatra – or, indeed, any further reports from Ireland.

Wednesday night, Jon phoned in a very brief report and I scribbled hasty notes.

“The ferry arrived at 7am,” Jon said. “And we must have looked innocent despite the long hair because we didn’t get stopped for any checks.”

Jon described how, by way of contrast, a chap driving a posh E-type Jaguar had his vehicle subjected to a general search while the CFZ party were just waved past.

(I think Corinna has the longest hair of the three but there’s probably not much in it.)

Jon continued, “We arrived in County Kerry around lunchtime, and at Doc’s at 1pm and spent some time talking to him and his wife.”

Jon said that groovy things are happening, and that the rest of the afternoon was spent meeting various members of the Shiels clan.

I then gave Jon a brief update on how things are going at CFZ Central, and then the call concluded. If my recording set-up works OK, then next time I should be able to post a verbatim transcript on the Internet. Good stuff, eh.

TONY SHIELS: "IT'S ALIVE!!"

Tony Shiels wrote to me yesterday, and his letter included the following passage:

"One of my grandchildren tells me that, according to certain Internet blogeens, I'm `the late Doc Shiels`, dead, departed and deceased. Must have been as sick as a Pythonbic Parrot with PSItticosis (accent on the psi). Mark Twain may be gone but at the time of writing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

That was close"

I thought that we should really put the record straight. Tony is alive, well and living a few miles from Killarney....