–Monster truck rallies can be good brainless fun, and the customization of some of these vehicles is extraordinary. — Just wanted to share this example of a furry monster truck! Others styled like dogs can have floppy ears, a tail, and a tongue…it ain’t Shakespeare, but it’s fun to see these huge vehicles sailing through the air…and it’s probably no coincidence that many of the best-selling vehicles have carried the names of animals…
(<sighs for the return of the Volkswagon Fox…>)
—Mokele-Mbembe is a dinosaur-like cryptic creature living in and around the Congo. The name translates as, “one who stops the flow of rivers.” The creature is thought of as a sauropod that managed to avoid extinction. Pygmies indigenous to the area also ascribe some magical powers to the beast.
The first sighting of this cryptid was in 1776, but most eyewitness reports occurred during the 20th century. The legend of Mokele-Mbembe has inspired a lot of fiction, including the Disney film, Baby.
—Destination Truth reports the existence of a Cambodian wildman, an ape-like man who goes about naked with long hair and a sword (a guy could get into that!). The remote area of the appearances is rich in legends of wild men living in the forest. This guy is not Bigfoot as he also sports tattoos, and Bigfoot doesn’t work with a sword.
It gets better in that a young naked woman was also seen with the guy. She was captured as the duo lurked around the fringes of a village to steal food; the wildman escaped capture. The feral girl was reunited with her biological father, who identified her from a scar she had acquired before her disappearance 18 years ago. The language skills of the girl were poor, and she supposedly didn’t communicate much verbally with the wildman (guys aren’t much for conversation, anyhow). After being given a bad haircut and living with her father in civilization for about ten months, the girl again escaped into the forest, and has not been seen since.
A likely explanation is that the wildman escaped from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia about 20 years ago, and has never bothered returning to civilization…kinda like those handful of Japanese soldiers in isolated locations who continued to fight World War II for years after it ended…
— Hehe, Mongolian Death Worms are cryptids reported to exist in the Gobi desert of Mongolia. They are supposedly two to five feet long (not as big as a sand worm from Dune), reddish in color, and kinda look like intestines. More intriguingly, they are said to be able to spit sulfuric acid, and can kill at distances by electrocution! — Gotta get me some of these puppies for my backyard!
The most recent expedition in search of these creepy-crawlies was conducted by the reality TV series Destination Truth in 2006-07. This show would appear to be the SciFi channel’s answer to the History Channel’s MonsterQuest. In searching the Gobi Desert at night for the Death Worms, they found a tunnel of some sort on the sand. As this might be the lair of a creature that can spit sulfuric acid and electrocute prey, the intrepid investigators did what any of us would do…they plunged their arms into the presumed worm hole! Soil from these holes tested normal rather than acidic…
— Hope you weren’t eating; I’ve got some “thing” to show you! This “thing” was washed up off a remote island by Alaska in early August 2008. The island was very remote and the sea too rough for the “thing” to be inspected up close, and so it was photographed from a boat. The question arises, what is this thing? Possible answers include an aborted Beluga whale fetus, a decomposed elephant seal, or a ray. We may never know now what this “thing” is (or was), since it is likely to have been carried away since its discovery. Post-mortem identification of species remains can be challenging due to rapid decomposition and predation, if you’re lucky enough to get ahold of anything at all…
–No, we’re not talking about Big Bird, that mellow yellow fellow with the endocrine problem universally endeared to children on Sesame Street. This is about cryptic birds big enough to carry away small children, as reportedly happened in Lawndale, Illinois in 1977. At that time, a 4′ tall boy weighing 56 lbs. was reportedly carried 35 feet by an enormous black bird with a white ring around its neck. The bird was said to have had a 4-1/2 foot body, and each wing of the bird exclusive of the body measured 4 feet. The boy pounded at the bird and was eventually dropped after having been carried that 35′ distance; he was physically unharmed, but suffered psychological problems afterwards. The bird came to be referred to as the Lawndale Thinderbird, after the enormous birds of Native American legend…
Felix regarded his three cats late one evening as they bounded around his apartment, eventually coming together in a fur pile. “They must be play-fighting,” thought Felix, “can’t be yiffing, ’cause I’ve had them all fixed.” As the three cats rolled around together in a ball, it became harder and harder for Felix to distinguish just where one cat ended, and another began. The feline ball seemed to stretch as it rolled this way and that across his apartment carpet, eventually stopping in a dark corner of a room. From the ball something extended vertically, a neck and discernible head that were distinctly feline…why, the three cats had combined into one! The large, singular cat formed from several continued to stretch and rear itself, eventually sitting at about half the height of the astonished human. The augmented feline regarded the man with an unnerving, steady gaze.
“What are you?,” marveled Felix, “Why are you staring, and what do you want with me?”
The cat spoke with a voice audible only within Felix’s head. “See these eyes of green?,” it said, “I can stare for a thousand years!” The cat sprang at Felix, hitting him squarely in the chest and knocking him to the ground.
Pinned, Felix looked up at the cat, and beheld his baleful eyes. Wordlessly, the voice of the cat again filled his head. “See these eyes so red?,” asked the cat, “Red like jungle burning bright! Those who feel me near, pull the blinds and change their minds!”
Felix struggled and opened his mouth to scream. “Just be still with me,” advised the cat, continuing to pin the man. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through!” Glowing ectoplasmic tentacles emanated from the cat’s mouth, threading their way into the open mouth of the man, and filling it. Felix’s eyes rolled back into his head and his body trembled as he began a fateful transformation.
The transfer complete, the cat withdrew his mouth from the man’s face and appeared to be at peace. “It’s been so long,” remarked the cat, shrinking in size and dissociating into three separate housecats again, who wound their way around the body of the man, mewing and crying as they witnessed his rebirth.
The cat-person Felix sat upright, and instinctively began licking and grooming himself. “I’ve been putting out the fire with gasoline!,” he remarked half-aloud as he regarded the full moon through an open window. Looking at his cats with a new and fuller understanding, he carressed each one and then lept effortlessly to the window, looking back momentarily with new slitted-iris eyes. “This will be the Year of the Cat,” he remarked to the feline trio as he flung himself through the window and into the welcoming embrace of the night in fulfillment of his destiny…
(With thanks to the great David Bowie, and the 1982 movie Cat People…see the videos on You Tube!)
Republican Consultant:–Ladies and Gentlemen, for Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, we give you Sarah Palin!–Governor of Alaska, she’s hunted moose and gutted them with her own two hands!
Rocky the Flying Squirrel:—Now there’s an image I didn’t want in my head!
Bullwinkle J. Moose:–Well, that’s not gonna get my vote!
Republican Consultant:–And she’s in favor of off-shore oil drilling!
Caribou:–D’oh!–Well, there goes the neighborhood!
Rocket J. Squirrel:–Let’s get outta here, Bullwinkle! — She’s no environmentalist!
Bullwinkle J. Moose:–I’m with ‘ya, Rock…Boris and Natasha couldn’t do me in, and this lady won’t either…anthro mooses are people, too!
–On August 25th, a guy from Texas found a moth bearing, yes, an image of Jesus, with this find seen on a recreational vehicle!–You remember, of course, the image of the Virgin Mary seen in a cheese sandwich?–The guy at least sees the moth as something God created rather than as a re-creation of Jesus, which would pose profound theological questions eclipsing even the Mothman…
…this might lead to The Gospel According to Lepidoptera, and lend bug hunts the significance of a spiritual pilgrimage…and maybe Mothra is truly worthy of veneration, having the death and resurrection thing going… 😉
–There’s something about canids and howling at the moon that is so satisfying, so primal, and so cleansing…the moon is eternal, it is pristine, it is pure and cold…it compels us to pay it tribute by howling.–Just give it a try!–Pick a time and a place when the moon is full, and you can be alone with it. Focus on the moon, and let the feeling, the need to howl build slowly in your chest…tilt your head back as the feeling builds and rises in you, open your mouth fully, and howl at the glowing, mysterious white orb high in the heavens!–Don’t worry that your howl isn’t good enough for anyone else to hear! You will get better at it, and the act itself will seem more natural, more necessary. Afterwards, you may feel strangely cleansed and peaceful, at one with nature and yourself.– So howl at the moon, feel feral and free…and become part of a tradition as old as canine life itself!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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