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| This is the very photo James Pittman took of the Mouse Lake Monster (it's located to the left). |
Just a few weeks ago, we reported on a strange beast spotted at Mac Dee
Dee's Organic Farm that has been nicknamed “The Saber-Toothed Assassin,”
and wouldn't you know it (?) Smiley's News has received yet another
unidentified creature report. When I got news of this, my trusty, junior
photographer, Daniel P. Smithwater and I rushed to the scene to get an
exclusive interview with the witnesses. The sighting of the latest
cryptid happened
last Sunday at 7:35 p.m. Standard Eastern Time when three people (who
didn't know each other) were standing on the shore of Mouse Lake, near
Riverville, New York enjoying the view: Dr. Arizona Stevenson, a
zoologist at
Animal Adventures Inc.,
Emily Curtis and James Pittman. It was that time when they got the
shock of their lives. Before we go on, I'd like to say that despite its
name being “Mouse Lake”, it isn't small. It's around the size of Lake
Champlain in Vermont and upper New York, which might explain the
presence of an equally large unidentified creature. “I was enjoying my
time relaxing on the shore of Mouse Lake when I saw it,” recalls Emily
Curtis. “I looked over the water and saw a large animal break through to
the
surface. The other two
people on the shore at the time also saw it.” Emily Curtis works at
Flowering Interiors in Riverville and says she has no knowledge of
animal life, so she couldn't identify the strange creature. James
Pittman, a wildlife photographer, also didn't know what the animal was
and when asked what the animal looked like and appeared to be doing at
the time, he was quoted for saying, “I have no idea what was before my
very eyes . . . but [I] knew instantly that it was worth photographing
so I got my camera out and snapped a quick photo (the one seen above).
It came out a bit blurry, but considering most strange animal photos, it
was pretty good! So anyways, what was it doing? Well, I looked up when I
heard the noise of an animal exhaling across the lake and saw that it
was a very elongated creature. It seemed to have its eyes and nostrils
near the top of its head, four flippers, a long tail and when it opened
its mouth upon reaching the surface, I'm pretty sure I saw rows of sharp
teeth.” He went on to explain that it looked greatly like a
“flipper-legged, bulky snake or a giant monitor lizard with flippers”.
Emily then exclaimed to James saying, “You forgot to mention its length!
That thing was huge! It must have been
at least 50-60
feet in length! I originally thought it must have been a whale or
something, but the head shape and the elongated body were not
characteristic of a whale.” Dr. Arizona Stevenson, being a zoologist,
wasn't able to make a clear identification either. “It couldn't have
been a whale,” she says, “because it was too skinny – whales that grew
50-60+ feet in length are either bulky baleen whales such as the
majestic humpback or blue whale or Sperm Whales which have large bulging
heads. This creature didn't have a bulging head or baleen whale-like
bulk.” The witnesses also told me that within 30 seconds of its
appearance, it vanished beneath the watery waves out of sight. Arizona
believes that the creature must have been coming up for a breath of air,
ruling out its identification as a fish because fish don't breathe air
like mammals and reptiles do, so it must have been either a mammal or
reptile. After thanking our interviewees for their time, I headed off to
Dr. Samuel Adamson, a paleontologist from
Animal Adventures Inc. who
had before helped me give a hypothetical identification for the
Saber-Toothed Assassin. I showed him the photograph that James had taken
and he said, “Based on the description given by the witnesses and the
cryptid in this photograph is definitely an animal presumed to be
extinct, if it's not a hoax that is.” He went on to say that, “If it's
not a hoax, my best guess would be perhaps that this is a mosasaur.”
Mosasaurs were marine lizards that lived in the oceans of the world
before Noah's Flood, about 4,350 years ago. They were sort of like
modern monitor lizards, but had flippers and were WAY larger – some
averaging 40-60 feet in length. Samuel told me that the largest species
of mosasaurs such as
Tylosaurus, Mosasaurus, and
Hainosaurus were
some of the most ferocious predators that ever lived on the planet and
ate everything from fish (including sharks), turtles and squid to sea
birds and even other mosasaurs. “They were the T. rex of the Cretaceous
(referring to the habitat, not the fictional time period),” says Samuel,
“the top predators of their world.” Then Samuel explained that,
“Another possibility for this creature's identification is an extinct
species of whale called
Basilosaurus.
Basilosaurus was
a large whale – about 60 feet in length – and unlike modern whales, had
a snake-like body.” He said that both mosasaurs and
Basilosaurus were air-breathers, mosasaurs being reptiles and
Basilosaurus being
a mammal, so they had to come up to the surface to breathe. Otherwise,
we might never have known if that creature spotted at Mouse Lake ever
existed. Scientists around the New York area are curious as to what
secrets Mouse Lake and the possibility of finding an amazing creature
(if it's not a hoax), that has been given the official nickname of the
“Mouse Lake Monster”. Just like similar lake monsters such as the Loch
Ness Monster in Europe and Champ in Vermont, it's already attracting
attention of cryptozoology lovers from all over who hope that scientists
will soon be able to learn as much as they can about the Mouse Lake
Monster. Emily Curtis seems very excited about finding this creature
saying, “Whatever it is, it would be a wonderful thing to finally find
and identify the Mouse Lake Monster. I won't be involved in any
expeditions to find it though, that's for sure! I'll stick to my flower
shop.” And just to think, that if our witnesses weren't around to see
the Mouse Lake Monster get a breath of fresh air, we might never know
this amazing, elusive creature ever really existed.
Written by: Mr. Smiley
Photographer: Daniel P. Smithwater
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