Monsters

[poliphilo]

Almost every large body of water in the world has a monster. Nessie is only the most famous.

Evidence comes in by dribs and drabs. Plenty of sightings, but the photographs are always teasingly ambiguous (or faked.)

And then there are the sea monsters.

What are these things? I want them to be plesiosaurs, but the weight of probability is against it. Loren Coleman (and he's the man) suggests that they're a rare breed of long necked seal. That really does cut them down to size.

I have been fascinated by them all my life. When I was a very small kid I has scared of paddling out into the sea in case a monster came swimming by.

Actually, that fear has never gone away.

I was never scared of sharks or jelly-fish or things like that- real things that posed a real threat. Only of these hypothetical things that posed a hypothetical threat.

There are no cases on record- not recent cases anyway- of lake or sea monsters hurting anyone. The threat is purely metaphysical. I'm afraid of them (and love them) because they're uncanny.

Things half seen, of indeterminate size and shape, slip-sliding through the dark.

What do they symbolise? Is it something to do with sex? Is it something to do with God?

I can't quite grasp it.

There's a chap about to go down into Loch Ness with a state of the art submarine. Perhaps he'll come back with a long-necked seal on a leash.

I so hope he does.

I so hope he doesn't.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

There's a chap about to go down into Loch Ness with a state of the art submarine. Perhaps he'll come back with a long-necked seal on a leash.

I so hope he does.

I so hope he doesn't.

I hope he doesn't. I'm thinking of poor King Kong, who was brought to the New York stage in chains and who went mad.

What if he sent Nessie to Sea World, and attendents trained him to catch hoops with his long neck?

He'd go mad, too, and so would his mate and children, left alone in Loch Ness, hiding in their underwater cave...

And now I remember a long-ago visit to the Hutchinson, Kansas County Fair. My father paid a quarter, and we went inside a tent to see a Sea Monster.

It was lying in a box not two inches bigger than it was; the box was filled with water.

I looked at it with horror, not because it was a monster but because it couldn't even move!

Much later I recognized what I had seen: it was a sea lion, and it was slowly being tortured.

I hope Nessie is smart enough to take his family through the rift that will keep it safe in the other dimension--in their waterworld home.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's horrible.

Man is the worst monster of all.

There was a episode of the Simpsons where they captured Nessie and evil Mr Burns put him on exhibition just like King Kong. I forget what happened next.

I don't want Nessie captured. What I want is indisputable photographic evidence- and maybe a tooth or a whisker to provide back up.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I don't want Nessie captured. What I want is indisputable photographic evidence- and maybe a tooth or a whisker to provide back up.

Diana Gabaldon mentions Nessie in one of her books - I can't remember which one, but it seems like the *sighting* takes place in modern times rather than during the time traveling.

I can't imagine that anyone could capture Nessie. And, if there IS evidence, wouldn't that make it less fun? I believe.

I think you do as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If Nessie turned out to be a real animal it would, I agree, be a little sad.

Unless, of course, she was proved to be a genuine survivor from the age of the dinosaurs. That would be the best outcome imaginable.

The naturalist Peter Scott was fuly convinced of Nessie's reality. He even proposed a scientific name for her- Nessiteras rhombopteryx.