MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: ODD BEHAVIOUR BY SEALS?

I came across this story in The China Mail of September 30th 1920 or 1929 - unfortunately the type is unclear. I am not sure whether or not it is significant; I never knew seals attacked humans unless provoked. If indeed they were seals. The China Mail, for those of you new to my blogs, was a Hong Kong newspaper.

FASCINATING SEALS
BATHERS SCARED
CURIOSITY OF A DOCILE BEAST

Consternation has been caused among timid holiday folk at Home by the theory that many bathing fatalities attributed to cramp are due to the bathers having been seized by seals and dragged beneath. According to experts there is no need for any fear on this score.

“I do not think it is at all likely.” Said Mr Oldfield Thomas F.R.S. (of the Natural History Museum) “ I have never heard of such as case, and do not believe a seal, which lives chiefly on small fish, would molest a human being.” This opinion was concurred in by Mr C.T. Regan, F.R.S. and other authorities.

Though seals have violent quarrels at mating time, they are usually timid and inoffensive, and probably the most docile of all wild animals when in captivity. The seal, however, is noted for its curiosity, and might be attracted by some of the bathing costumes now in vogue. (1)

1. The China Mail. September 30th 1920/1929

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES:SOME NOTES ON THE MERMAID PART TWO

Hello again!

Today I`m continuing my extracts from The Deep Deep Ocean concerning knowledge of animals thought to be related to the mermaid. Unless you are a believer in the mermaid, this gives a view of the distribution of seals and dugongs (?) or other similar animals around the British Isles several hundred years ago.

'Two years later [than 1556, see Part One of this blog] there is another printed notice of “a moste true and marvellous strange wonder, the lyke hathe seldom been seene, of xvii monstrous fishes, taken in Suffulke, at Downham Brydge, within a myle of Ipswiche, the xi daye of October,in the yeare of our Lorde God 1568 [I love this olde worlde language! Anyone for a Facebook Group? Let uss revivee olde worlde English?] Stow, in his “Annales,” gives a particular description of this “wondrous draught of fishes” some of them being “eight and twentie foote in length at least”.'

Woolfe, in 1586, printed a broadside containing an account of a monster fish found in the stomach of a horse! The registers of the Stationers` Company contain an entry in 1604 of 'a strange reporte of a monstrous fish that appeared in the form of a woman from the waist upwards, seene in the sea.'

Even in 1822 a so-called mermaid was publicly exhibited in London, and continued to be shown to the curious in these matters for many months. But the monster was found to have been constructed of the members of various animals, dexterously put together. Some amusing lines appeared at the period, which I will transcribe:

There then appear 5 verses, I will mention the first and last below:

'Come, mistress mermaid, tell us, for you`ve seen
The deeps and things proud Science pines to see;
Be kind, and say if you have ever been
In worlds the poets deck with imagery.
Say, as you floated on the green sea`s billow,
Didst e`er see Neptune`s car, or Amphitrite`s pillow?...

'Farewell, dumb thing! perhaps the next we find
So long a time may not require to woo,
`T will speak, perchance, and haply prove most kind,
And tell us all we`ve useless sought of you-
Rare information yielding on the morning
She`s clapped within the glass case you`re adorning.' (1)

1. W.Jones The Broad Broad Ocean p.266-267

Talking Heads Air

Air…Air
Hit me in the face
I run faster,
Faster into the air
(I say to myself)
What is happening to my skin?
Where is that protection that I needed?
Air can hurt you too
Air can hurt you too
Some people say not to worry about the air
Some people never had experience with….

Stop Canada's Seal Cull!

Richard Freeman sent me a link to a letter from Rob Marsland, who is the director of IFAW in Action about the continuation of Canada's cruel seal meat industry. Mr Marsland points out that the industry is dying and invites his readers to join the cause.

More information can be found here:
http://www.kintera.org/cms.aspid=962135&campaign_id=44915&msource=DR100322003&tr=y&enString=kuRMSMULOpLTIeNZIrL5IbNNKgJFJQTCSVRQMnNXJiKQK5MQLtE&auid=6080937

Thanks, Rich.

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: 18TH CENTURY SEA MONSTER, OUT OF PLACE SEAL AND ABBERANT PIGEONS

Dear folks,

Today I am returning to my Strange Nature Scrapbook for a selection of items dating from some time in the eighteenth century up to the mid-1990s. Unfortunately the cutting from The Gentleman`s Magazine is undated, but it could date from the 1700s.

Mr. URBAN

As the ships are now said to be returned from the discoveries in the Northern regions,let me intreat you to insert in your Magazine, the following relation from Paul Egede`s* account of Greenland.

“July 6th, a most hideous sea-monster was seen, which reared itself so high above the water, that it`s head over-topped our main-sail. It had a long pointed nose, out of which it spouted like a whale. Instead of fins it had great broad flaps like wings; its body seemed to be grown over with shell work, and its skin very rugged and uneven; it was shaped like a serpent behind, and when it dived into the water again, it plunged itself backwards, and raised its tail above the water a whole ship length from its body. Our eye could rate the measure of its body to be no less than the bulk of our ship in thickness, and in length three or four times as long.”

The opinion of gentlemen who have traversed these seas, concerning the existence of such monsters, will no doubt be acceptable to the public, and particularly to, Sir, Your constant Reader, Y. D. (1)

*Egede was a Danish-Norwegian missionary to Greenland who translated the New Testament into the Greenland language.

This next story is from the New Scientist of January 15th 1994:

Seal that went walkabout

Bjorn Lytskjold had the shock of his life when he first noticed this dead seal in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. The animal seemed to be staring straight at him. “I was really scared,” he says,” and did not expect such a terrible grin.” ….He found the seal at a spot 250 km from the coast amd at an altitude of 1300 metres. It was the second seal the team had found in a week, and the researchers have no idea how the animals ended up so far inland, or how ancient they are. They dug the perfectly preserved animals out of the ice and transported them back to Oslo, where they will be examined by Nils Ǿritsland, a biologist at the institute. His first task will be to establish when the animals died, using carbon-dating techniques. (2)

On February 5th 1994 Ron Watkins of University London replied in New Scientist:

“I can report that this seal was not the first to accomplish such a seemingly incredible feat, or at least the first to have his/her hurculean deeds recognised.

At Christmas 1988,my colleague, Chris Harris, and myself found a similarly misplaced seal carcass at an equivalent altitude and distance inland while mapping the geology of Tvora Mountain, in western Dronning Maud Land, Antartica. On this occasion, we too were astounded at the finding of the creature in such an unlikely location.

Being earth scientists, and not zoologists, we had difficulty in ascertaining whether the entire skull was preserved on the carcass which had been crushed and suffered wind ablation on the exposed surface…” (3)

Finally, those pigeons:

From the Daily Mirror of August 23rd 1994:

“BERMUDA FLY-ANGLE Pigeons get lost as comet hits Jupiter. Hundreds of racing pigeons are vanishing into mid air – because crashing comets have distubed the earth`s magnetic field, claim bird fanciers. Top breeder Graham Chupka has lost dozens of young birds, as if they were disappearing into a pigeons Bermuda Triangle.

And he believes comet activity is knocking the birds off course by affecting their homing instinct…He has lost dozens of pigeons since the comet Shoemaker Levy-9 crashed into Jupiter last month.” That could have upset the earth`s magnetic field, and in turn, upset the bird`s navigation.” he said…But a spokesman at London`s Royal Observatory doubted that the comet crashing into Jupiter would have affected the Earth`s magnetic fields. “It is unlikely that`s the reason the pigeons have been vanishing…if they were using the magnetic fields in the first place.” He said. (4)

1. Gentleman`s Magazine. Date unknown.
2. New Scientist. January 15th 1994

3. New Scientist February 5th 1994
4. Daily Mirror August 23rd 1994

Devo Big Mess

I am cowboy Kim
Cowboy Kim I am
I am a lucky cowboy
Let me tell you why
I`m a man with a mission
A boy with a gun
I got a picture in my pocket of the lucky one
I`ll announce the winner
On the radio
With my microphone
I do a super show
I wear a cowboy hat
It is my business hat
I must tell you that….

DALE DRINNON: The Ugly Mermen

There are several recorded sightings of what are reported to be big ugly mermen in lake lonster lore. One such creature is said to inhabit Thunder Bay in Lake Superior (first reported 1792 and subsequently called a 'Merbeing')

I am attaching an illustration of a Vodyany, in this case a Russian 'Old Man in the Waters' in an illstration from my edition of Larousse Mythology, a drawing made by Ivan Bilbin in 1934, and in direct comparison to a bearded seal in Spitzbergen (Arctic Ocean). The bearded seals can turn up in the oddest places, most notably once recently inland in Florida, but also sometimes in the Baltic sea and even in Japan. In the article in question in Larousse Mythology, the location of Olonets in Karelia is specifically mentioned, although similar reports come from adjoining parts of Russia and nearby Finland.

This is not the only kind of Vodyanoy: in central Europe the name attaches to a sport of aquatic dwarf that wears raggedy clothing and a broad hat, and another version is described as being a large frog or salamander that sometimes looks like a log that moves against the current, and which seems to include the 'Pskov crocodiles' as one of the variants. This would be the giant salamander sort of creature, also known under a variety of other names in the Baltic countries.

But in the case of these Ugly Mermen of Karelia and Finland, I think we are plainly dealing with a type of large seal that has wandered inland. The same sort of creature could also be at the base of 'Merman' reports in the North Sea and especially around Norway. I remember reading in a book called Mysteries of the Sea that an identikit of merman reports was closely similar to a description of a walrus, minus the tusks.

RICHARD FREEMAN: CANADA SET TO SLAUGHTER SEAL PUPS INSIDE A NATURE RESERVE

The Nova Scotia government, together with the Federal Departent of Fisheries and Oceans, is allowing a cull of seal pups on Hay Island off Cape Breton. Up to 2200 seal pups are due to be cruelly bludgeoned to death despite the fact that Hay Island is part of the Scaterie Islands Wilderness - a protected nature reserve. This dosn't seem to matter to greedy politicians.

Help stop the slaughter.

https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=4383

http://www.hsicanada.ca/wildlife/seals/seals_actions.html

BETH DOES IT AGAIN

Beth from Hartland Wildlife Rescue has done it again. Here is the North Devon Journal story about how she and others rescued a baby seal near Hartland, but we have also some unpublished photographs of the rescue guaranteed to up the aaaaaaaaaaw factor....

GUEST BLOGGER GLEN VAUDREY: Seeing is believing

Glen is a very new recruit to Planet CFZ. Indeed, we had never heard from him until a few months ago when he wrote - slightly diffidently - to us, asking whether he could write a volume in our ongoing series The Mystery Animals of The British Isles. We asked him for a proposed synopsis and a sample of his writing, and were overawed by what we received. Here was a man who loved both words and the countryside, and could use one to describe the other in poetic but always down to earth terms. We were beginning to come to the conclusion that here was someone that Bob Marley would have described as a `Natural Mystic`, when the final manuscript arrived, and we knew that we were right. So we asked him to be a guest blogger..

When looking for mystery creatures does our current knowledge affect our perception of what we are going to see? For example whenever I catch the briefest glimpse of a great northern diver as it swims past in the distance, would it ever even cross my mind that I might have seen a Great Auk if I didn’t already know what one looked like.

It was a little over a year ago on a particularly foggy day when I saw what I at first suspected to be a long necked sea serpent popping up its head in the most unusual of places, Stornoway harbour! After both the initial excitement of the sighting and the obligatory cursing at not having a camera upon me I soon realised that what I had been privileged to observe was not an unidentified sea serpent but rather a grey seal as it was periscoping, it raised what appeared to be getting on for nearly half its body clean out of the water as it struggled to see around.

The reason all this came to mind was that as I set about researching mystery animal sighting in the Hebrides I became aware that not all the things reported over the years were necessarily mystery animals, for instance there is one sighting of a long necked sea serpent the description of which sounds remarkably like a submarine.

But not all reports come out so negatively, on the Isle of Mull in the years leading up to the First World War there were reported sightings of a large mystery black dog. Fast forward a few decades to the late ’70s and reports start to appear of sightings of a large mystery black cat.

Maybe those two sighting are not connected in any way other than my mind running ahead of itself, but perhaps we should consider that if today you see a large black animal in the distance it is almost certainly chalked up as a cat because that’s what people see, even if the sighting might be couched with ‘I thought it was a dog till it moved’.

What then are the chances that those earlier mystery dog sighting had more to do with the viewer being secure in the knowledge that it had to be a dog because such a thing as a large black cat on the Isle of Mull just couldn’t possibly exist.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON.....

The newspaper industry never ceases to amaze me. Despite the story being well and truly defunct, (as far as I am concerned at least), the newspapers still seem fascinated by it. I have done three newspaper interviews already this morning, and I would not be surprised if there were more to come.

Our old friend Dr Darren Naish (that's Dr Daz to you) who gave the final verdict on the creature, has written up the affair in full at Tetrapod Zoology, and I was amused to find that it has even been mentioned on David Icke's message board.

Goodness. What a long, strange, trip this is becoming.

In the meantime, thanks to Matty, here is another press clipping, from last week's North Devon Journal...