This Cryptozoology lark was piss-in-the-hand, Another Kiwi reckoned. All we had to do was find the "Lupus Marinus" or marinated wolf, and fame and fortune was ours, not to mention raising Riddled to the dizzy heights of blogging fame currently occupied by Tetrapod Zoology. And since Belon describes the Lupus Marinus as an amphibious animal that occupies the shoreline and lives on dead fish washed up on the beach, all we'd have to do was look for a beach where there aren't any dead fish, and we'd know that a Lupus Marinus had eaten them all and was probably still somewhere in the vicinity.
Three things were wrong with this sanguine vouchsafing:
(1) No-one warned me that the animal in question would sway like a desert mirage seen after three shots of tequila (or so I hear from a friend) and leave a blur on the surveillance cameras, ruby glistening from its navel, shimmering around the floor. Also, Belon's description has it that
The nose and teeth are like those of a dog, the muzzle is beset by strong whiskers. The fur is coarse, with fairly spiky shags, and marked all over by black spots (as is the entire body).-- yet our photographs show stripes rather than spots. It could be a different animal, or it could simply be a Lupus Marinus that has run repeatedly into a zebra so as to cause interchanging of molecules.
(2) It turns out that any words starting "crypto-" trigger Evangeline van Holsteren into one of her episodes and she starts ranting about special-purpose boards and inverse discrete elliptical functions, not to mention getting the drinks order muddled. I'm sure I wasn't drinking the Patrón tequila; that stuff's expensive.
(3) You cannot talk about Sea Wolves in a pub without people overhearing and launching into long boring arguments about the relative virtues of the 1941 version with Edward G. Robinson versus the 1993 remake with Charles Bronson.
Also the Lupus Marinus is surrounded by a halo of letters flashing on and off, but I am not one to judge since the same thing seems to happen to me after a few pints.
8 comments:
all we'd have to do was look for a beach where there aren't any dead fish, and we'd know...
The scientific method in action. I'll drink a glass of wormwood beer in your honor, Sir.
~
you know, a spot is just a stripe seen end-on
What is long and hard and full of sea wolves?
A pupmarine.
This Cryptozoology lark was piss-in-the-hand, Another Kiwi reckoned
Smut may have confused my pronouncements about the effects of Cryptosporidium
Those seawolves sure look like leucrotas, {snagglepuss}alzabos, even {/snagglepuss}.
The leucrocota is the size of an ass, and has the neck, tail and breast of a lion, the haunches of a stag, cloven hooves, a badger's head, and a mouth that opens from ear to ear, with ridges of bone instead of teeth. It is the swiftest of wild animals, and is said to be able to imitate the human voice.
Sort of a Glenn Beck thing?
An examination of Beck's birth certificate would be informative. According to Pliny, "By the union of the hyaena with the Aethopian lioness, the Corocotta is produced, which has the same faculty of imitating the voices of men and cattle. Its gaze is always fixed and immoveable; it has no gums in either of its jaws, and the teeth are one continuous piece of bone; they are enclosed in a sort of box, as it were, that they may not be blunted by rubbing against each other."
Also, the leucrocuta "Has a rigid backbone, and cannot look behind itself."
Artist's rendition here, in Pose #3 in the repertoire (playful, prancing, both front paws up).
The size of whose ass is what I'm wondering.
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