With a title such as “Mating Season” and a cast of anthropomorphic cartoon animals, you may rightfully have a suspicion of what the show is largely about. Your second clue comes with the realization that the new 10-episode first season show on Netflix is produced by Titmouse, the same studio that gave us Kevin, about the anthropomorphic tuxedo cat trying to find himself in the big city after his human owners break up, and essentially dump him in an animal shelter…
“Kevin” is Shakespeare, however, compared to “Mating Season.” This show is RAUNCHY, and definitely NOT FOR CHILDREN! I cannot shoutthat from a sufficiently tall enough building. Not only do the denizens of an anonymous forest have sex, but they have it often, and with others outside of their own species! Struggling a bit to relate a somewhat sanitized version of a central occurrence in episode 1, a hyperactive, highly sexualized male raccoon named Ray winds up sharing intimacies with a flirty female skunk, and in the aftermath of that, they wind up with a “copulatory tie,” joined together at the genitals until later in the episode…
(Picturedabove; Ray, Josh, Fawn, and Penelope…)
Now I do know that raccoons are stereotypically among the bad boys of the furry fandom, and that the fandom has always had a “yiffy” component, but I worry a bit that some outside of the fandom are going to see all of the highly sexualized animals on parade here, and think that’s mostly all that the fandom is about. It took us a long time, for example, to put the CSI episode featuring fursuits behind us…
The artwork in Mating Season is good, as is characteristic of Titmouse studios, and far better than most of the mass-produced cartoons on television. We need to consider, however, the messaging conveyed by such an adult cartoon. The show is unapologetically vulgar, and emphasizes shock value at the expense of character development. It’s strangely reassuring, however, to learn that I am still capable of being shocked, almost to the point of feeling violated as a furry. I do not enjoy wallowing in the mire; we furries are better than this! 😼
I mean, Rigby the raccoon of Regular Show (below) would be shocked by Ray the raccoon, and that’s saying something! 🙀
Nowin all fairness to the series, episodes beyond the initial one do seem to be slightly tamer, and we can sense the closeness of the animal community. There’s quite a variety of different species represented, such as Penelope the lesbian fox, her straight friend Fawn the deer, Josh the bear deserted by his mate, Dylan the wolf, and Summer the lesbian hound, who has an intense but doomed relationship with Penelope.So beyond the sexuality, the series deals with relationships, and the difficulties inherent in them. For example, the wolf moves in with the deer, but they split up as the wolf urinates everywhere to mark his territory, and invites his pack to a real “animal house”-styled celebration of the full moon, complete with drinking and howling….
Now this is cute; furries are actually directly referenced in the series (I believe in episode 3), and some of the animals play at being human! Turn-about is fair play, I guess. So perhaps I was initially too harsh on the series out of my initial shock, and Mating Season can be quite funny and clever if you’re OK with the vulgarity and strong sexual content…it’s just not for everyone, and definitely for adults only…
Episode 8 of Season 5 of MonsterQuestdeviated from previous installments of the revived series in that it focused entirely on aliens, and had the flavor at times of being an X-Files episode. I almost expected to see Fox Mulder make an appearance, but regretfully he did not. I liked this change of pace from the usual cryptid coverage, usually featuring Bigfoot in varying forms. I only take issue with space-faring aliens being categorized as Monsters, when I regard them as advanced life forms…
Anyways, the episode featured “accounts of people who claim they were stalked, attacked or even taken by threats from beyond our world, because not all monsters come from the woods – sometimes they come from ABOVE!” Alright, I’m all in for this one, but why must we call possible aliens “Monsters?”
The show kicked off with the story of the “Allagash Four,” four Boston college students who claimed that they were abducted by aliens. Going on a planned week-long camping trip in Allagash, Maine in August of 1976, the four young men set up by Eagle Lake, using a canoe for night fishing on their fourth night there. They felt a sensation that they were being watched, and saw a ball of light rising behind them that had a “rolling effect” to it. They waved a flashlight at it, after which a beam of light reportedly came out of the orb and illuminated them. Terrified, they started paddling back to shore, and had almost made it there when suddenly everything went black! Their next memory was of standing on the shoreline, with no idea of how they got there…
Thinking that they had only been gone an hour, it turned out that they had been gone for several hours, with no member of the group being able to account for the “missing time.” They went their own ways afterwards, graduating from college…but twelve years later, they experienced recurrent nightmares of being trapped in a room with strange beings having a long neck and big eyes. They reached out to an investigator, Ray Fowler, who put them under hypnosis separately. Each recounted being trapped on a gurney, paralyzed, while a panel was placed on their chests, and scrapings were taken from their arms and legs. A 1993 book on the abduction brought both wonder and doubt, but the men are standing by their abduction story…
Then in Fyffe, Alabama in 1989, 50 people reported seeing a triangular-shaped craft hovering in the sky in one of the most well-documented UFO mass sightings. The government contended that they had seen helicopters, but witnesses said that the object made no noise, and was completely silent. In a related case, one man’s father-in-law at night saw a light out in a field, walked up to it, and was hit by a beam of light that struck him in the forehead, rendering him unconscious. He woke up the next morning in the middle of the field with nothing around him…
Several apps exist supposedly to facilitate contact with extraterrestrials. A story was presented of a man who in 2014 used such an app to contact a large, 7′ to 8′ black alien with a large head and neck, and long arms. He passed out following his initial contact, but in the middle of the following night, heard a shrill, screeching sound outside of his window, thinking that his dog was killing some small animal there. Going outside to investigate, he beheld a silent light in the sky hanging there above the treeline. Shining his flashlight, he then saw the reported alien standing in the middle of the road, who was surprised and ran away. The man retreated to his house and stood guard with a pistol, hearing an all-consuming voice in his head that essentially said“If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead!Go back to sleep, NOW!” The man woke up the following morning, and his dog didn’t return for three days, behaviorally changed. The man regrets having initiated the “contact…”
References to “Little Green Men” that are now part of the language originated in a tobacco farm in Kelly, Kentucky in August of 1955. In an isolated, rural areaa man went to get well water, and saw a small, silver object thirty to forty feet above him. Others from the household came to investigate, at which time a 3-1/2′ to 4′ figure came out from behind the house. The figure was related to have a big round head, long talons, and a luminescent green glow! Alarmingly, he hovered above the ground. While others ran inside the house, a grandmother then went outside to check things out for herself, screaming “I saw it!”
At this point, an uncle inside the house shot at the alien through the window…welcome to ‘Murica, right?! Gunfire didn’t seem to much faze the alien, and another was seen perched in a tree. Aliens then came up to the doors and windows of the house, and were met with welcoming gunfire. Lacking a phoneor other means of outside communication, it was decided to send someone to the next town seven miles away for help, where that person went to the local police department that in turn summoned about two dozen responders to go to the house in the middle of the night…
Upon arrival the responders saw shotgun and rifle shells all over the yard and in the house, and searched but found no bodies or blood, human or alien. Saying that there was nothing that they could do, the police departed. The family was sworn to secrecy by the father, but the next morning many gawking newcomers came in cars, wanting to see the “little green men.” A local radio station came to interview members of the family individually, and their stories all agreed. Drawings were also made by family members that were consistent. State troopers the night of the incident had seen lights in the sky that they couldn’t explain, as had other people.
Project Blue Book actually reviewed the state police findings, and put surveillance aircraft in the air. Their results were inconclusive, but there was no evidence or indicators of a hoax, either. The case remains unresolved… 🤔
Also covered was the classic Travis Walton November 1975 UFO abduction, when a member of a six-man logging crew disappeared after being struck in the chest by a beam of light reportedly emitted by a UFO that he went to investigate. A massive manhunt found nothing, but five days later and 15 miles away from the site of the disappearance, the victim emerged, saying that he was abducted by aliens, and examined. The presumed abductee passed numerous polygraph tests. A book and a 1993 movie were made of Walton’s reported experience…
Some reported alien abductees have presented with red dots in a triangular pattern on their skin. The spring of 2022 case of a retired policeman was examined where he first woke one morning to find numerous marks on his foot that disappeared the following morning. Two weeks later, the man had the sensation of being dropped on his bed, opening his eyes to to see three glowing beings in shining gold color that emitted light; they gradually faded from sight. The man compared the experience to coming out of anesthesia. He told his wife, and had three red dots in a triangular pattern on his skin although no memories of how they got there. Regression therapy was sought from a hypnotherapist, uncovering memories of being put on a table and covered with a gel blanket by a gold being with black eyes who sent low voltage jolts through the gel blanket into him. He reported having a telepathic communication from the alien in which he was asked “how do you feel?” One alien tapped a spot on his arm, and then he was back in his room, looking at the alien; the abductee’s memories ended there. He asked the therapist if his experience was a dream, and she contended that it was a repressed memory…
Oregon has long been a UFO hotspot, with over 3,600 UFO sightings reported there since 1974. In one of the mostfamous, a farmer on a quiet farm near McMinnville snapped photos of a strange flying object hovering over his property. The photos actually appeared in Life magazine, but scientists later concluded that the object was likely a small model hanging from a wire. Many still believe that the farmer captured something unexplained, and the area now hosts one of the largest UFO festivals in the U.S.!
In another Oregon case from 2019, a woman sitting outside noticed a smoke-like circular cloud which contracted into a humanoid figure with large eyes and a pointed chin. He walked down a pathway, apparently not perceiving her. Retreating into her house where her children were, the woman went about shutting her blinds, seeing while so doing the same humanoid figure in a vacant apartment across the street! She called her sister, who advised her to take a picture. The woman did so through the blinds, feeling that the alien was staring back at her. The alien never reappeared…
So there you go, faithful readers! Just remember that not all aliens are monsters, and may regard us as interesting primitives…
The Ohio Grassman was kind of featured in Episode 6 of Season 5 of MonsterQuest, which also touched upon some similar Bigfoot subspecies, and padded the hour out with paranormal stories about Amityville and even “time slips.”
Now the Grassman who had previously been covered during Season 2, Episode 4 of MonsterQuest has been previously reported since the 19th century, and is said to make large dens of grass and sticks from which his name is derived. Standing seven to ten feet tall, the Grassman weighs between 300 to 1,000 lbs…
In Galena, Ohio in 2017, a man went walking his Doberman near dusk when a black thing jumped from a ridge to a bush, throwing a rock and then a tree branch at him. Other branches followed, and the man walked through a creek to retreat back to his house. The creature or creatures followed, knocking over his pool furniture, deforming a chain link fence, and knocking underneath a deck that he was standing upon.He later found 15″ foot impressions in his mulch bed…
The Spottsville Monster plagued a family at an isolated farm in Kentucky near the banks of the Green River. In 1975, chickens began disappearing from the farm, with strange noises heard in the field. A chained goat was later taken, with the chain broken. A pony and dogs were also killed. While waiting for a school bus, a large 9 to 10 foot tall creature was seen. The property owners decided to dig in, and with friends and neighbors laid in wait upon a rooftop, firing upon creatures heard in the surrounding woods one evening…
In the Amityville, New York site of the infamous slaughter of an entire family in 1974, the killer contended that “voices within the house made me do it.” The subsequent occupant of the house in 1975 reported seeing two red eyes in the boat house of the property, and later a horned figure’s head seen in a fire. A giant white hooded figure was later seen on a staircase, and the front door was torn from its hinges. These accounts were apparently given as illustrations of hostile presences invading domestic places, although the invaders were more demonic than biological entities.
An encounter with the Fouke Monster in Arkansas in May of 1971 was touched upon, described as being a massive, hair-covered beast. It was speculated that the creature may be following rivers that connect the mid-west. In Southern Indiana a girl with her dog in an isolated setting reported locking eyes with a seven-foot tall ape-like creature with tangled, reddish-brown hair. She fled the site, the next day seeing footprints in the mud that convinced her that she had seen the Fouke Monster…
Although it didn’t seem congruent with the other stories, the last segment of the hour touched upon time slips, a reported paranormal phenomenon where a person unexpectedly travels to a different time period. These often fleeting experiences typically involve witnessing or temporarily existing in a past (or even future) era without using technology, often accompanied by a sense of dread or environmental change. At times a personal awareness appears to be gained by the experience. A 1996 case was cited in Liverpool, England where a then-contemporary person time-slipped into the 1950’s, noting the change in vehicles and stores present…
A 1981 case in South Carolina was touched upon where a young woman in a farmhouse was admonished not to go into a front room, but left alone ventured into that room to observe through a window a man on a tractor in a different season hit on the head by a tractor part. Years later, she learned that her great uncle had died from an accident on a tractor in that location…Spooky, but not fitting in well with the other segments…
Wow!– -This is quietly awesome! After a long hiatus following its cancellation in 2010, the show MonsterQuest is coming back with new episodes, beginning January 2, 2026 at 10 p.m. on The History Channel!
In my humble opinion, MonsterQuest was one of the best shows on cryptids, the paranormal, and the unexplained out there. The series had generally good production values, and commentators who were actual researchers and scientists rather than hillbillies with guns running around in the wilderness. I thought that the show was gone forever, but it’s coming back, and soon! Hopefully the quality will be there as well…
The first episode will supposedly cover encounters that law enforcement and others have had with unexplained phenomena, including “classic” creatures. I just wanted to give all readers of this blog a “heads up,” then we all can get “our minds melted!”The available previews as below look good…
I, for one, think that it’s time that Warner Bros. rehabilitates and brings back Pepe Le Pew, the hopeless romantic French skunk. Created by Chuck Jones and first appearing in 1945, the character was caught in a firestorm a few years back for his signature behavior of foisting his unwanted amorous intents upon females, specifically one Penelope Pussycat…
I get it! What was perfectly laughable and largely acceptable behavior in 1945 isn’t now, and Pepe needs to be and could be re-imagined and re-introduced, perhaps as a defender of women or as a bonded mate to a now equally-loving Penelope; portray him as a chastened now successful relationships counselor, even! We just lost a lot when Pepe was banished to cartoon purgatory…
Pepe was lovable, and had a certain charm. He satirized French culture and the stereotype of the great French lover, blinded by his own misperceptions of his desirability; the joke was always on Pepe, who because of his skunk-odor wasn’t desirable, and was hitting on a member of another species entirely, failing to discriminate such. Pepe had a cluelessness that was relatable and even endearing. He never successfully scored, unless you count unreciprocated kissing as that…and face it, there are very few cartoon skunks in the field!Heck, with his repellent scent, re-brand him as a kind of superhero or police officer. Imagine, for a moment, the Pepe and Penelope crime fighting team!
So how about it, Warner Bros? Why does Pepe Le Pew suffer harsh sanctions when the Mango Mussolini does not? Free Pepe Le Pew from his cartoon prison, and re-introduce the boy as someone who’s learned his lesson, and changed! – – It can be done!
I was raised in what is today seen as a socially inappropriate background, with what are now considered ethnic and racial stereotypes foisted on me at home, school, and the media.
At school, I can well remember one spinster elementary teacher telling the boisterous and noisy class that we were behaving “like a bunch of wild Indians.” The underlying message here was that “Indians” were “wild,” hence uncivilized, and that this was bad. At no point, of course, were they referred to as Native Americans. In a 1941 cartoon, Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt, Bugs Bunny mocked and humiliated a Native American portrayed by Elmer Fudd.
Then in the early 1960’s there was The Dick Tracy Show, which curiously featured little of Dick Tracy, but rather his designated officers which included a stereotypic Mexican officer, Go-Go Gomez, and a martial arts adept Japanese man, Joe Jitsu.
Now Go-Go Gomez wore a sombrero, sandals, and a broad grin, and was actually modeled as being a human version of the Warner Bros. cartoon character, Speedy Gonzalez, who happened to be a mouse. Speedy, gratefully, has thus far largely escaped the cartoon purges, and is well-liked by many Latinos…
Joe Jitsu was portrayed with grossly exaggerated Asian features but was a cool little guy who was unfailingly polite as he used jujitsu to thrash criminals all the while apologizing “excuse prease” or “so solly” as he demonstrated profound mastery of his martial arton criminals…
Now I never knew that I was being poisoned, but rather thought that Joe Jitsu was a seriously cool dudewho I fantasized as a kid about being. He was kind of a superhero to me who even drove an awesome car! Joe was polite, classy, in charge, and a positive role model.This did not stop both Go-Go and Joe from being condemned as racial stereotypes in spite of the fact that they were good guys, not to mention cartoon characters. Passage of the years and a changing society has just not been kind to them…
And of course, we have Disney’s Song of the South, reviled today and almost impossible to see because of its rather rosy portrayal of slavery in the antebellum South. I don’t think that Br’er Fox represents the best of my kind, either…
There are many other examples I could cite, but in spite of being given an upbringing amidst a plethora of ethnic, racial, and species stereotypes, I don’t think I emerged any worse than moderately warped, which can be an adaptive feature in the current times… 🦊
In thewild, weird west as well as in the present day, folks saw and reported strange beasties, such as the “Thunderbird” supposedly pictured here, reported by the Tombstone Epitaph in April 1890 which had reportedly been terrorizing Native American and local populations for some time. So a couple of good ole cowboys shot the sucker down, and are proudly posing with the carcass in the picture above, its wings extended to give you an idea of the critter’s size. It resembles a pterodactyl, which some contend never had become fully extinct, and which may upon rare occasion be seen from time to time
Trouble is, the newspaper in question lacked the capability of producing photos at that time, and the original of the photographic evidence has never been located. It is accordingly widely thought to be a vintage fake. Similar photos also exist of Civil War soldiers who supposedly also shot down a pterosaur or two.
So why, then, do such photos exist? The answer is simply that such stories sell newspapers, even if unaccompanied by a photo. They were simply meeting a public demand for the sensational while increasing their own profit margin. People tended to be a bit more gullible in the 1890’s, although there’s still no shortage of such folks today.
Now, I would dearly love to see Rodan grace the skies, but until we have scientific proof of the existence of such cryptids, we need to be skeptical of any and all such claims. If nothing else, they were entertaining then as now…and we want to believe!
Six Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published owing to racist images and references within them, specifically in regards to black and Asian people. Not to excuse or condone such things, but they were common stereotypes of the time, and I did grow up with them while never becoming a white supremacist. I far preferred the surreal iconoclasm of Dr. Seuss to the exclusive vanilla wholesomeness of the Dick and Jane readers, plus he drew awesome anthropomorphic animals!
Objectionable racist portrayals in kiddie lit and entertainment of the time were not by any means restricted to Dr. Seuss. Consider Elmer Fudd as a ludicrous Native American in Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt. Remember Disney’s Song of the South. Visit the 1961 Dick Tracy cartoon series for stereotyped crime fighters Joe Jitsu and Go GoGomez. These are but a few examples, to be sure.
The discontinued Dr. Seuss titles are but a few books among many that do not have objectionable content, and generally are among his lesser-known works. Dr. Seuss got a lot of kids reading, and eagerly so. His art had furry roots, and could be quite thematic while wildly entertaining. It largely holds up well today. While Theodor Geisel was a product of his times as are we all, he was a pretty cool dude whose legacy remains a good one.
And all I know is that I’m keeping and cherishing my Fox in Socks book forever, even if the fox does appear to have some kind of strange unknown disease or genetic affliction…
If you, like myself, are drawn to strange stuff, and might confess to watching an occasional episode of MonsterQuest or Ancient Aliens, you might be interested in a new show scheduled to debut on The History Channel in my area Saturday night November 14th at 9:00 p.m., History’s Greatest Mysteries. Featuring Laurence Fishburne who will both host and narrate, the series will get into some of the strange and loose ends of history, such as the Roswell incident, the Shackleton Expedition, the sinking of the Titanic, and similar stories.
The first episode will get into the strange story of hijacker D.B. Cooper. While not all episodes are likely to be equally intriguing, they’re going to have three episodes alone on Roswell, for cripes sake! I’ll withhold my coveted Pawprint of Approval rating until I’ve actually seen a few episodes, but History Channel usually does have good production values, and this new series just might be worth a look…
We can’t all be vampires, much less Dracula…some of us are just children of the night, and I can live with that. It’s not that I dislike vampires, it’s just that I’m much more of a werewolf guy! Besides, we children of the night have a hell of a band, being know for our music. Alright, now we’re just a garage band, but watch for our breakout album…
…that being said, MonsterQuest recently aired a new episode titled, Real Vampires. Now vampiric legends exist in 95% of human cultures, with the oldest originating thousands of years ago in China and India. Kali the Hindu goddess was one such example. A word of warning that some gruesome things covered in the episode follow…
Flashing forward to more modern times, we have the case of “JB,” who was buried in the 1800’s in Willington, Connecticut. His remains were accidentally discovered in 1990, and his body exhumed due to its unusual condition, which included the remains being mutilated, with the corpse decapitated, the ribs broken, and the thighbones disarticulated and placed into an “X” formation on the chest…some people thought that they were destroying a vampire here. Modern forensic investigations found that the poor soul had suffered tuberculosis, revealed in the thickening of his rib bones. Terminal tuberculin victims cough up blood towards the end of the disease progression, which to the unenlightened may have suggested a blood feeder rather than a disease victim.
New England vampiric beliefs likely came from eastern Europe, where in Hungary in the 16th century, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the “Blood Countess,” was obsessed with maintaining her fading youth and lured young girls into her service over a twenty year period of time, later torturing and killing them and bathing in and drinking their blood; she would be convicted of 80 counts of murder, and is thought to have been one of the most prolific female serial killers in history. In 1784, the Johnson children were exhumed to presumably break a vampire curse, which often involved removing and burning or destroying internal organs of the deceased. Years before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, a woman called Mercy Brown in 1892 was exhumed two months after her death due to suspected vampirism, and had her heart cut out, burned to ashes, and fed to her brother, the gruesome ritual failing to prevent his death from tuberculosis, then called “consumption.”
So what gives with these people?! Mysterious plagues, superstition, and a lack of scientific understanding can drive people to do strange and horrendous things. Disease processes and even human decomposition were poorly understood, with such things appearing paranormal to those unfamiliar with them. Rigor mortis and then the subsequent relaxation of muscular tissue after death can cause corpses to move somewhat, with the gases of decomposition also causing bloating and at times the expulsion of bodily fluid through the mouth that can appear blood-like. Subsequently, those looking for vampires could appear to find them through changes in the corpses of deceased individuals. – – Get the torches, pitchforks, and stakes ready, we got us an “undead” vamp here!
Even more recently, a “vampire clan” operating in Eustis, Florida in 1996 killed the parents of one of their disciples, their leader drinking small amounts of the blood of the victims. “Clinical vampirism” has professionally been recognized as a delusion that the blood of others is needed to survive.
After examining this extensive but not exhaustive history, MonsterQuest last examined the phenomenon of psychic vampires, who reportedly feed off the life force of others and are not themselves “the undead.” A psychic investigator shown on camera during the episode found that a so-called psychic vampire could slightly affect a measured electromagnetic field in an interaction with another person that they were “feeding” off. I think that many of us know people who can drain the energy out of a room by entering it…
The legend of vampires is embedded in popular culture, and involves power over someone or something else. Portrayed over the ages as anything from outsiders to dark heroes, vampires symbolize a deep human hunger…
FOXSYLVANIA 
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