What is next? Will R’lyeh rise from the waves of the Pacific as the stars and planets align just right? Will sleeping C’thulhu rise from his eternal slumber only to snuff out the flame of insignificant humanity? Just wait folks, the time is nigh for the coming of the Great Old Ones!

Okay, enough silly speculation. My best guess for the appearance of this beast is a viral marketing thing. So, I’m calling shenanigans on all of this.

This was on CNN this morning.

Some lifeguard has the corpse in a linen bag.

The hair on the body is all gone but that doesn’t say the animal must have been short haired like a pitbull just because it is easier to visualize from these photos.

“But looking at the claws, and at the teeth in the front, it looked like it could be something else, something vicious.”

It was relatively small, roughly 21/2 to 3 feet long, he said.

Brown notes that the rumor that the thing is in someone’s backyard is false, apparently, as it has been moved.

Interestingly, Brown has collected some other interesting info from his readers:

Joann Dileardo saw it at the end of Roe Avenue in Patchogue, a few weeks ago. “I didn’t know what that thing was,” she said. “It looked like a pig.”

Another reader, Pat, e-mailed that the ladies in his office saw it on an East Quogue beach — back in April.

Elizabeth Barbeiri said her family saw it about a mile east of Gurney’s Inn in Montauk, July 14. And Ryan Kelso, via iPhone, said he spotted it — alive! — in the Montauk dunes. “It looked about the size of an average fox, gray in color, eyes like a mole, hairless and was breathing quite heavily,” he wrote, “needless to say we were freaked out by this discovery and fled the area quickly.”

Lavey Fater saw a surfer bring one to shore, near Ditch Plains.

“It was hairless and gross,” Fater reported. “… The surfer said he had no idea what it was, but that he threw it in the dunes because he didn’t want to be surfing next to it.”

Keith found something last week in Greenport; Chris found one a month ago at Jones Beach east of Field 6. (”The one I saw had a longer snout or beak or whatever you want to call it.”) Sean said he buried one, 3 feet deep, in South Jamesport.

I had a REAL LIFE encounter with the thing…

luckily i had my video camera to catch it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6tyJzfVUvg

if you do not like to see disturbing images DO NOT WATCH THIS!!

” “In photos there appeared to be a beak. It was just a tricky angle. It’s a dead raccoon. That’s what it is. It’s undoubtedly a raccoon, the same teeth, paws, the right size.”

Larry Penny, East Hampton’s director of natural resources, agreed and added that when raccoons get old they wander off to marshes to die. High tide might have floated one out of a marsh and into the sea.”

After seeing this link in the Cyptomundo comments section, I myself am leaning heavily towards it being a raccoon. (Though if the estimate of three feet long is true, that’s one giant raccoon.)

http://www.animachina.com/images/whatisit/montauk_monster_racoon.jpg