COLIN HIGGINS: Alan's Imaginary Cryptid

Hi Jon,

I was interested in Alan's created cryptid idea from a few weeks ago. It's a good one. On a similar theme, here is a visual blog of mine centred around a character I called Bugbear, a kind of relic hominid cum sprite that lives on the high moors. I haven't had the motivation to add to it for a while though I keep doing the drawings, poems and tales.

V. Best,

Colin Higgins


http://bugbearchronicle.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html

ROBERT SCHNECK: Crypto Couture

"Loch Ness, A Scottish Fantasy" is beautiful and, while we're on the subject of the Loch Ness Monster as inspiration, here is an example of crypto-couture.

This item appeared in the August 24, 1934 issue of the La Crosse (Wisconsin) Tribune and Leader Press and comes from the AP. It's been sitting in my clippings folder for ages and I'm hoping that someone, somewhere, might have a picture of it.

LOCH NESS MONSTER INSPIRES WINTER OUTFIT

PARIS--(AP)--The "Loch Ness monster" which roamed around the Scottish lake last season has inspired the name of a new winter costume.

The ensemble, named "Loch Ness," combines a slender wool frock with a hip-length jacket of the same fabric designed with long front "tails"
furred in gray fox. It is accompanied by a narrow brimmed hat of dark green felt with a fluff of the same gray fur on top of the crown.

The article is on this page at the bottom of column 2. It's easier to read if you drag it on to your desktop .

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

Hello there and good morning (or other part of the day if you’re reading this at a time other than the morning). I do wonder if anyone ever reads this preamble. On the strength of the ‘staggering response’ yesterday I would guess not. But anyway, here is the news:

Hedgehogs born at Wildwood
Gray wolves get federal protection again
Land O'Lakes nurse investigates Bigfoot sightings
Obesity Clues From Research On How Burrowing Frogs Survive Years Without Food
Victim Of Chimp Feared Animal, Brother Says
Fecal DNA Sampling Provides Extremely Accurate Estimates Of Tiger Populations
Rabbit-Size Elephant Ancestor Found -- Oldest Known
Khram Island, Thailand, June 17, 2009
Bear skips veggies for chocolate in Calif. home
Yard-long "Megapiranha" Fossil Found

That’s palaeontology at the sharp end then.

THE PERUVIAN "GIANT SNAKE" EXPEDITION

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8127436.stm

It is interesting to see that it has made the BBC news, several weeks after we covered it. However, my personal opinion of the story has not changed. Several of the bloggo readers have asked why we have not yet broadcast Mike and Greg Warner's video. This is because we have not received anything from them.

Out of interest, this video is the most recent thing to be embedded onto YouTube with the keyword `Yacumama`, and I sincerely doubt whether it is relevant...

Loch Ness, A Scottish Fantasy by Johan de Meij

I have always been interested in music based on cryptozoological themes. Indeed I have composed a bit of that genre myself but to my knowledge, this is the first work of classical music based on a cryptid.

More about the composer...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Meij

BIGFOOT OF DARTMOOR (Try singing that to the tune of `Werewolves of London`)

It is a weird feeling being an orphan. My father died three years ago, and my mother seven. And not a day goes by that I don't think of some question that I wish I could have asked them. For example, today Oll was going through some cupboards that haven't been opened for years, and we found some Canadian medals, with no record of whose they were, and why we had them. I was irrisistibly reminded of the middle verse of Eric Bogle's Green Fields of France:

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

But that's not what I wanted to write about. A couple of weeks ago Naomi and Richie - CFZ bods from Texas - and Naomi's lovely mum, came to visit, and on one of the days they were here, Corinna and I took them to Dartmoor.

Now, I first visited Dartmoor forty years ago this summer; the summer I turned ten, and I remember seeing these odd indentations in the turf back then. I remember exclaiming (much as Naomi did a few weeks ago) that they looked like bigfoot prints. My father impatiently told me not to be silly, and then explained what they actually were. But I cannot remember.

Someone help!

RICHARD FREEMAN: The web of fear

Guest Blogger time for Richard Freeman again. It almost seems silly introducing Richard to you all once again when he makes an appearance as guest blogger several times a week. However, our viewing audience/ readers (whatever you like to call yourselves) is growing so fast that it is certain that some of you missed the last time I introduced him.

Recently a large orb weaver spider in Atherton, North Queensland captured a full-grown finch in its web, as these spectacular pictures show. Just a week later Townsville residents Tom and Judy Phillips took photos of a giant golden orb weaver spider eating a double-barred finch in their backyard. The finch was just over four inches long.

This got me to wondering what was the largest animal ever to be caught in a spider’s web? The tensile polymer is, after all, stronger than steel and kevlar.

In 2004 a 12-inch snake of unknown species was captured in the web of a Chinese house spider in Qingyuan county in the eastern Zhejiang province. After an 80 minute struggle, the spider managed to bite the snake in the neck and kill it. Though this was only a tiny snake the odds were still very much against the spider.
The same year Tania Robertson, a receptionist from Bloemfontein in South Africa, saw and photographed a brown button spider capturing, killing and partially eating an Aurora snake just under 6 inches long (see photograph).

The spider had been nesting in the air-conditioning unit in her office.

Both creatures are now in the National Museum.

Once again the snake is a youngster but still much bigger and stronger than the spider.

• In 2006 Lisa Parsonage from England snapped a picture of a red back spider killing a snake in a bush toilet at Henbury Meteorite Craters in the Northern Territory.
• Again the snake is a small one. It seems to be that the snake gets its head tangled in webbing, giving the spider a chance to bite it then retreat to a safe distance.

On youtube there are a number of films of spiders subduing vertebrate prey. These include several films of a live mouse been fed to a tarantula who swiftly subdues it without the aid of a web, as well as one eating a small lizard. All of these were filmed in captivity.

• There is an impressive (and natural) film of a goliath tarantula killing and eating a young lance head snake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjgRFONRwJ4


• A black widow with a small snake or legless lizard (the film is blurred) in its web
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz6YLH55CX8&feature=related


• Here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sLI0uHa-To and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXHDa26BwiE&feature=related we can see a spider of indeterminate species, subduing a small snake and a tarantula carrying a small dead coral snake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjgRFONRwJ4

A big factor is who gets the drop on whom. Giant centipedes often kill large spiders but here the centipede is killed by a tiny snake. http://www.youtube.com/watchv=FZFMhjTvWBI&feature=fvw

Small bats also fall foul of spider’s webs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRQaCvCZeTo