The monster among us
Posted: Thursday, July 31, 2008 12:42 PM by Will Femia
The Montauk Monster appears to be the lastest Web sensation breaking into mainstream news so here's a quick summary to catch you up:
As best as I can tell, The Monster's first Web appearance was
on this blog a week ago. Creepy in itself, the added detail of the proximity of the carcass to the Plum Island Animal Research Facilities.
New York Magazine was able to locate
a witness to the monster, thus dispelling Photoshopping possibilities, though not eliminating some kind of model or sculpture. The best detail of the report is at the very end when it is relayed that the body was carted away by an "old guy." It's probably safe to assume they mean "old guy" in the "Dr. Moreau" sense so the creature probably either escaped from his lab or else he's been hosting a nest of them on his estate. There is no direct refutation of the possibility that this creature is in fact a specialty food to provide sustenance to whatever this eccentric old scientist might be keeping in his personal menagerie.
Local media coverage has used the kind of
loose science reporting I love in stories like this:
"Four government biologists contacted by Plum were unable to identify the species of the animal from its photo and came to the conclusion that "no such creature exists..."
So science has no answer for this animal and therefore it is surely either alien or science-gone-bad with the additional possibility of being an ancient sea creature or some combination of all of these.
Gawker has been providing
avid coverage. Speculation has ranged from dead raccoon to dead dog to
marketing stunt but the
mystery persists.
And if it wasn't a marketing campaign to begin with it hasn't taken marketers long to catch up.
Venom energy drink has placed a bounty on the creature. So what's mostly likely to happen is that big game hunters will flock to Long Island, eventually capturing a sibling of the monster which will enrage its significantly larger more dangerous mother and possibly herd or tribe and we'll need some Will Smith-like character to save us all from otherwise certain slaughter.
