The Rampage of the Tusked Maurader

A creature known as the "Tusked Maurader" supposedly terrorized a busy highway a few years ago.

Note: I was rummaging through some old files when I found this article someone had written years ago. Because I could not confirm who wrote this report, its authenticity is up in the air. Lizzy the Lizard thinks its a fraud. Even though this article claims I wrote and did the interviews it features, I'm pretty sure I'd remember if I conducted the interviews, don't you think? Despite having its authenticity in question, I still thought that this article would be a good read.

The Great Pumpkin, the Saber-toothed Assassin, the Mouse Lake Monster . . . these are all cryptids that have been recently cited in and around Riverville. Now we have another cryptid report from I-52 that leads into Riverville itself, but this time it made its appearance in front of a lot of people! About 10:00pm, droves of cars were riding along the highway when they started experiencing major delays and road jams. The cause? Some large mammal was said to be causing all the commotion. As soon as I heard about the incident, my trusty junior photographer, Daniel P. Smithwater and I rushed out to the interstate to get some exclusive interviews. Unfortunately for us reporters, the authorities kept us away from the apparent creature sighting site until much later, so instead I merely interviewed some eye witnesses to wrap my head around what happened that night. One such eye witness, Janet Cutter, was quoted for saying, “I was driving along the interstate at around 10:00pm to pick up my husband from the airport with my five-year old son, Jake when we had a huge traffic jam. I waited for about five minutes and that's when people started running past my car as if they were terrified of something.” She then explained that she was parked behind a large truck at the time, so she couldn't see what was going on ahead of her when suddenly, a small car came whizzing through the air from in front of the truck and landed on the side of the road (thank goodness no one was in it!). “That's when I started screaming,” says Janet. “Then a heard a loud trumpeting sound and . . . [it] sounded like an elephant's, but I wasn't sure. As I waited in the car, the truck in front of me was knocked to the side and I saw the culprit, though it was hard to see because it was so dark.” When asked what the creature looked like, she said that when she saw it, she continued screaming. Janet described the beast as very elephant-like in appearance; complete with a long trunk, tusks of almost imaginable proportions, and a large body, much larger than any elephant she'd seen before. “It was too large to be an elephant,” Janet told me. That was all Janet had to say so I interviewed a man by the name of Noah Tompkins, who was stuck in traffic with two of his friends while trying to get home and was also surprised by what he saw. Noah is quoted for saying, “It was way too big to be an elephant, dude. But it was like, totally awesome! It had the typical elephant shape, but its tusks were super long, dude.” When asked what he saw of the creature, he responded saying, “. . . it was like, way too dark, dude. But one of my friend's, Timothy Carter was like, “Come on, what'up dude? What ya wait'in for? Snap a picture before it gets away!' Fortunately I was able to snap a picture of the animal on the highway before the authorities rescued us from our car.” When I got a hold of the photograph Noah took, Daniel and I had a hard time making out what it was, but we could see that it was definitely an elephant like creature. This is the time many people started calling it the “Tusked Marauder”, even though it didn't kill anybody. However, the animal did upset a few people – trucker Danny Phelps was driving his fruit-filled truck down the highway when he got stuck in traffic and after the authorities rescued him, he went back to his truck to find it busted open and many of the fruits were either squashed or gone. “It must have eaten all the fruit!” Danny says. “I had a variety of mangoes, bananas, strawberries, blueberries . . . [a lot of other stuff] and all two tons of it was history! After a long five-hour drive from my supplier, I wasn't expected Jimmy's Grocery Store's next fruit shipment to bite the dust.” None of my interviewees were able to tell me what happened to the animal after the authorities rescued them from their vehicles, so it is therefore assumed that the authorities did something with the Tusked Marauder before reporters like me could go in and get a good photograph of it. Upon going back to Animal Adventures Inc., I showed the photograph to the company's head paleontologist, Dr. Samuel Adamson. He said, “I must say, it looks a lot like an elephant. It doesn't look anything like the elephants we have around today though, so I'm assuming that it's a mammoth . . . if the photo has not been photo-shopped, that is.” When asked what type of mammoth, he replied, “I believe that if the photo is accurate, this creature is a Colombian mammoth, one of the largest elephants that ever existed. There were still many of them roaming around southern North America 2,000 B.C. Unlike the more famous woolly mammoth normally found further north, Colombian mammoths were a fairly hairless species.” It seems that these cryptids keep coming and coming. As your trusty reporter Mr. Smiley, I can safely assure you that whenever the next one appears, I will be on the case, ready to get a good story.

Written by: Mr. Smiley

Photographer: Noah Tompkins

Edited by: Christian Ryan, Joy Hammond

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We here at Smiley’s News, I have been working night and day to get articles ready. I could really use some help! So we are looking for people interested in writing (especially kids and teens). If you are interested, PLEASE(!) send an email to animaladventures@aol.com and save me from working night and day! I’m exhausted!

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