fossil_digger Report This Comment Date: February 26, 2009 02:42AM
Yesterday, Gawker ran what appeared to be a photo of a bloated, leathery animal
corpse — only it was like no animal anyone had seen before. A stout, hairless
creature with a beak, claws, and the almond-shaped eyes familiar from renderings
of space aliens, it looked, in short, like a monster. Hence the headline:
"Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk." The photo had come over
e-mail to Anna Holmes, the managing editor at Jezebel, from an employee at
Evolutionary Media Group, in Los Angeles; Holmes passed it on to Gawker. Because
it came from a marketing company, Gawker surmised, "our guess is that it's
viral marketing for something." They later pointed to a Cartoon Network
show, Cryptids Are Real, which features similar-looking chubby monsters. We
called Evolutionary, where a woman named Alanna Navitski, who claimed to be
responsible for the tip, swore it was not a viral-marketing campaign. "This
is what happened," she said.
"I got this e-mail and opened it from my girlfriend who works at Harris
Publications, which has nothing to do with anything. Anyway, my girlfriend's
sister was there with her friends and one of them took the picture. And we were
like, 'This is the scariest shit we've ever seen.' And so — I'm in marketing
— we were like, 'Maybe we should send it to a few blogs and see if anyone else
is as freaked out as we are.' We had no idea that it would turn into this. Now
it's literally a beast of its own. But it has nothing to do with any kind of
campaign."
In fact, this turned out to be true. A number of eyewitnesses say they saw the
monster with their own eyes. "I saw the monster," says Michael Meehan,
a 22-year-old waiter at the Surfside Inn, which sits above the beach where the
monster washed up. "I just came walking down the beach and everyone was
looking at it. No one knew what it was. It kind of looked like a dog, but it had
this crazy-looking beak. I mean, I would freak out if something like that popped
up next to me in the water." So did anyone there, you know, do anything
about it? "This woman kept calling animal control," said Meehan.
"She wanted to name it after herself. I think they came and got it. The
carcass. Whatever it was." But did they? The East Hampton branch of animal
control referred Daily Intel to a supervisor who did not return calls for
comment. And Navitski, of Evolutionary Media Group, says her friend's sister
(who doesn't want to talk to the press, though Plum TV will host another woman,
Jenna Hewitt, who claims she took a photo, tomorrow) says animal control never
came. "They say an old guy came and carted it away," she said.
"He said, 'I'm going to mount it on my wall.'"
some special effects dude had fun with these people.

A_Nonymous Report This Comment Date: February 26, 2009 03:25PM
It's a dead, bloated, decomposing...raccoon.

dv8 Report This Comment Date: February 27, 2009 01:52AM
"Yesterday, Gawker ran what appeared to be a photo of a bloated, leathery
animal corpse — only it was like no animal anyone had seen before. A stout,
hairless creature with a beak, claws, and the almond-shaped eyes familiar from
renderings of space aliens, it looked, in short, like a monster"
sounds like someones mother in law

Mrkim Report This Comment Date: February 27, 2009 02:15AM
A coon with a beak? I don't think so, least ways not in these parts
