eyes without a face (or eyes for that matter)

Reports are pouring in about a new Montauk monster. I was excited last year when the original MM (OMM) showed up, as I am usually excited by the term “monster” (who isn’t?). I even sojourned to Montauk itself this February, not so much to see or hopefully see the MM, more out of an inborn instinct to travel to the very tip of things:

Montauk is the tip of the lower pennisula on the far right. Brooklyn is in the lower left.

Montauk was very cool (and cold, as it was February) and very lovely. Devo and I spent an extended Presidentine’s Day weekend at Daunt’s Albatross, which was quaint if backbreaking, and took in a pancake breakfast at the fire station and walked the pristine beaches and forests. We watched a solitary seal lay curved to the sky on a solitary rock until the lapping waves of a stiff wind and rising tide rudely tossed him into the sea and overwhelmed his perch. We saw and a dried-up-and-split-into-pieces carcass of what appeared to be a long-legged starfish (or, you know, a monster). But we saw none of this:

OMMMG

But still, the very notion of a monster, and one so conveniently located, had me hooked. I’ve long been a fan of Bigfoot/Yeti/Sasquatch, the Loch Nech Monster (got to like it when they put “monster” right in the name), Ogopogo, Chupacabra, the Hairy Half-man from Hinkley, dragons, ghosts, aliens, three-card monty and the smile on a dog’s face, so I still carry an affinity for MM, even as it was been explained to me by strangers over coincidental beers that Montauk isn’t far from an animal testing facility and, in all likelihood, MM is just a water-logged pug with it’s face peeled back like a hoodie. So when my friend Lesley said she was selling handmade clay animal heads and would make them by request, I didn’t hesitate to request a bust of the Montauk Monster:

so full of life

a twinkle in the eye

Very cool. I can totally see “Monty” hanging out with Glomer:

But during the design phase of the MM bust, I saw an image, an angle on the beast, that changed everything:

full frontal

Sure, I had been told that MM was just a dog with a ruined face, but now it was clear what I had taken for a turtle beak was just a side view of snout-bone. It’s that angle that had people hooked. Hell, if it had a turtle beak, then anything was possible:

Gojira!

But instead, it’s just some dog gone to pot. Which is the same case with this new photo. Anyone with a casual knowledge of what animal skulls look like (which is maybe less than I imagine, but there are museums full of this stuff) should note the snout-bone jutting from these “monsters” faces. A good axiom for Montauk-monster-hunting: “The snout points it out!”

I think the real question is why are Long Islanders throwing so many dogs into the ocean?