Natural History

(I wonder if the Fonz did this in Minnesota or Wisconsin. ; ) )

I hope no one  believed the drivel I wrote yesterday. I intentionally mislead you. No shark would ever make it up to Minnesota or Wisconsin. Too many locks and dams on the Mississippi. There also never been a shark in West Virginia– at least in historic times. That story came from an April Fool’s joke that I received about three years ago.

Why would I mislead you?Well, I am reading post after post about the Montauk Monster, I thought I’d try my hand at writing absolute tripe. I    wanted to see if I had any readers dumb enough to “bite.” I have none. But I am amazed at how many people think the Montauk Monster has something to do with a government conspiracy.

I did mix in actual facts: a bull shark was captured in the Mississippi near St. Louis, the Matawan Creek shark was probably a bull shark, and one was captured 2,000 miles up the Amazon in Peru. These sharks have shown up in Washington, D.C., proving that those who make political class are not the only cold blooded killers in that town. And the best lies always contain a lot of truth wrapped in.

I even gave some  canards about the Lake Michigan shark attack, which I actually think is totally false, and the skill that these creatures have at crossing locks and dams. However, I know I lost a few people when I said the sharks could jump Minnehaha Falls. Bull sharks do jump the rapids on the San Juan River in Nicaragua, but I doubt they would make it up these falls.

I apologize to anyone who would believe that story, but yesterday was my birthday. I wanted to have some fun. I wanted to try my hand at something like the Montauk Monster-swine flu theory. I actually had two rather disconcerting discussions on youtube about the Montauk Monster, swine flu, and government conspiracy. Someone actually asked me “Why woud Plum Island do that to a raccoon?”

The answer is it wouldn’t. Raccoons die every day, and some wind up in the ocean. Because we have killed tons of sharks and other scavengers,  these carcasses remain in the ocean long enough until they rot.

I also need to tell you that my own grandfather started a wildlife mystery entirely by falsehood.

His friend is the town barber. This barber keeps lots of taxidermied animals in the front window. One of them is a ghastly creature. It looks like a moderately sized monkey-type creature with long nails. It is obviously fake.

However, patrons of the barber shop often ask about its identity. For years, the answer was that it was just a joke.

My grandpa decided one day that he wasn’t going to go along with the “it’s a joke” story.

He knew that such a creature needed a heck of a story.

One day, a woman from the local church brought in her little boy for haircut. While waiting their turn for the barber’s chair, the little boy went around and checked out all the taxidermied specimens. When he approached the monkey creature, he asked “What’s that ugly thing?”

To which my grandpa replied: “It’s a bujeonowl.”

“A what?!” both the boy and his mother asked.

“A bujeonowl. Quite rare in this country. But I hear the DNR turned some more loose to keep the coyote numbers down.”

“Why would they turn out something like that?”

“Because unlike wolves or other predators of coyotes, these bujeonowls won’t also kill calves or sheep. You see, the bujeonowl likes coyote meat above all other animals. They wait in the trees until an old coyote comes slinking down the trail. When it passes the tree where the bujeonowl is waiting, it leaps down onto the coyote. It takes its long claws and tears out the coyote’s throat. Then it carries the coyote up into the trees to eat. If you see a coyote carcass up in a tree, you can bet that a bujeonowl carried it up there.”

Well, it wasn’t long before word spread that the DNR had turned out some new predator to kill the coyotes. Not everyone believed it, but those who did often came by my grandpa and asked him about the bujeonowl. He would tell the same story, although sometimes he would had that the beast had eyes that glowed read in the dark or that it sometimes hunted children, even claiming that his own brother was attacked by a bujeonowl one winter as the boys walked home from school.

One day, he found himself telling the bujeonowl story to an entire cafe full of people. I think after that, he started to feel guilty about the whole thing, and he stopped telling the story.

However, the story of the bujeonowl is not the story of a unique coyote-killing ape.  It is really an interesting story about how naive and gullible people are. After all, the year before the people were all talking about how the insurance companies turned loose the coyotes in order to reduce the number of deer and, thus, the number of deer-related damage claims.  Of course, that story was utter malarkey. The coyotes had arrived both on their own volition and because various hunt clubs wanted them introduced as a game species. (Of course, no one did any research to find out that coyotes don’t kill that many deer, and the insurance companies were more interested in knocking off a few elected judges than knocking off the white-tailed deer.)

So I’m sorry I misled you, but I hope that it is a fair warning. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, especially if it has to do with wild animals. People like to sensationalize everything.

And just remember, the Montauk Monster didn’t kill JFK. JFK and Elvis were last seen ice fishing  for bull sharks on Lake Woebegon.