Another dead raccoon has washed up on the beach-- just like this one that washed ashore last summer. And just like last time, let the media circus commence!
Just when you thought we had better things to worry about.
Another rotting, stinking raccoon corpse has washed up on a Long Island beach.
This time, it’s in Southold.
Like the Montauk Monster from last summer, this corpse washed up on the coast, and like that creature, this one looks like a raccoon that got washed into the ocean and then rotted away for a few weeks.
Raccoons have rapidly expanded their range northward since European colonization. They have rather loved our cities with all of our refuse and pet food to eat and buildings in which they can den. However, very few of these animals die from predation. In fact, very few animals will even attempt an attack on a raccoon. Coyotes do not typically attack raccoons. There’s a very good reason for them avoiding raccoons. Raccoons can fight with ferocity of a small bear, and they have been known to seriously injure or even kill even modestly sized dogs. Thus, raccoon numbers aren’t typically checked by predation. In the East, alligators are about the only animals that regularly hunt them.
Disease does check their numbers. The worst of these diseases is rabies. On the East Coast, a bad epidemic of raccoon rabies has been going on for decades. And let’s not forget that people poison raccoons.
Now, one would think that the average person would be familiar with raccoons. After all, they are a very common species.
But you’d be wrong.
Two things bring these stories to the fore.
One is that most people are somewhat ignorant of the natural world, even with common species such as this one. When your whole life is spent either in the domesticated suburbs or within the concrete and steel contrivances we call cities, you really don’t develop the kind of appreciation or understanding of the natural world that you would if you’d grown up in the middle of a forest or in farm fields. If something even remotely weird shows up, you can bet the media will be called.
The other thing that brings these stories to the fore is that the media are forever searching for sensational headlines. Newspapers are having a very tough go of it these days, and anything that sells copy is going to be a boon to any journalist.
But the Montauk Monster II is the same as the first– it’s a rotten, stinking, decomposing raccoon.
Update: MSNBC has picked up the story.
thats the same animal as the first montauk monster, just pics from a different side. i saw it on monster quest
Read the caption under the photograph.
oh and monster quest said it was a dog, a bull dog or boxer
I know dogs– that’s no dog.
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/08/the_montauk_monster.php
It’s so obviously a raccoon.
I know raccoons–that’s no raccoon.
I know raccoons, too.
And you’re dumb.
It’s funny how this sort of news only reaches across the ocean by Internet.
I’m glad i stumbled on it though, the speculation and heated disussions people have over this montauk monster has kept me quite fascinated but above all Entertained.
I’m a simple, average Dutch woman and by simply looking at some of the pitures and videos that circle the net i’m quite amazed.
People seem to forget what water pressure( whether it be salt or sweet ) can do to a corpse. It can make it swell and shrink to a point even a human being will look like a freakishly monster we’ve never seen before.
I agree on the fact that people have become too alienated with nature. The moment something looks different from your average text book explaination, the pitures were shown or the animals at the Zoo, people seem to go crazy and call it a monster.
Such a shame.
Not only that– the first raccoon called a monster was put on a flotation device, and then set on fire as it was cast into the ocean. That cause the fur to be singed off.
Some college age boy were goofing around on the beach when they came across the dead raccoon. They then decided to have what is called a Viking funeral in which a dead person is put on a ship which is set on fire and put to sea. Of course, the Vikings and other Germanic peoples did bury people in ships, but as far as I know, there were no cremations at sea.
Here’s the photo of the dead raccoon on its funeral ship: http://assme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/img_08721-225×300.jpg
See ? It’s not always the deep in depth and fascinating explainations people look for in these kind of stories.
But then again, I can see how modern life and numbed and dumbed people to a point it’s hard to find something that amazes them.
When there’s still so many amazing things right under their noses.