Solving the 'Montauk monster' mystery

The mystery of the "Montauk Monster" has been solved, said Drew Grant in ASSME.org. With "Scooby-gang luck," an old friend recently told me that he and some friends were behind the scary, hairless beast that washed up on a beach at the tip of Long Island last year. It seems a few buddies—just "being dumb"—set fire to a dead raccoon they found on a beach on the other side of the island, and pushed it out to sea for a "Viking funeral."

"Nice try," said John Cook in Gawker. The man did provide pictures, and the crucible of a "viking funeral" would neatly explain the monster's puzzling hairlessness." But the beach where this "anonymous" source said he and his friends set the raccoon afloat would have had to travel 16 miles, sidestep islands, and round Montauk Point to the open sea to have reached the spot where the Montauk monster was found.

Grant herself says she's dubious, said Sophia Chang in Newsday, but that her friend's tale is almost "too outrageous" to be untrue. Still, it doesn't explain how a second Montauk monster allegedly washed up this year.

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