Blog tracks ‘sightings’ of Jessie, a mysterious monster beneath Jamaica Pond
Now this is fun! A blog and twitter account recently appeared on the Boston landscape reporting sighting of a lurking behemoth beneath the largest fresh water in the area. Get it? ‘Jessie’ like ‘Nessie’?
“We are quite certain that Jessie is a giant beaver, Castoroides ohioensis. It’s the only thing that scientifically makes sense, and it fits a lot of the observational data,” said an e-mail from Harden, an office worker and artist, and Roche, a doctoral student in computer science at Northeastern. “He’s about eight feet long, covered in brown fur, and has a large, paddle-like tail.”
The grad student-reporters on this fantastical discovery even have a good reason why he hasn’t been photographed! Seems they set up night observation cameras and got amazing footage but a silly intern deleted them all!
Releasing information about Jessie via the Internet has “definitely created a bit of a buzz on Twitter, and there were an originally increased number of reports of Jessie sightings,” the e-mail said. “I think more people are out looking, and I think it may have made Jessie a bit more shy.”
Oh, that’s rich! They are having a lot of fun with this idea! I almost think castoroides might want to come to Martinez but I can’t even IMAGINE what the city council would do with that particular rumor!
The bloggers admit to having fabricated Jessie’s existence. “Everyone wants a little magic and mystery in life,” their e-mail said. “In this day and age, we are asked to believe so many improbable tales – that Elvis is dead, that ke$ha can sing, that we are not ruled by a race of alien lizard overlords – why NOT believe in a giant, prehistoric pond-dwelling beaver?!?”
Why not indeed? If you want a fantastical tale about the REAL castoroides, you can read all about his exploits and legendary battle with Coyote here. Come to think of it, it makes sense that there would be giant beavers in Massachusetts. Given the unbelievable amount of panic and outrage the arrival of an ordinary beaver causes – the trips to the health department for a kill permit, the claim that they are going to ruin the environment, the woeful kvetching to the media, the failure to problem-solve or think in any capacity about reasonable solutions – those beavers MUST be giant.
Certainly they couldn’t possibly be the same size as the beavers for which hundreds of other cities manage their challenges while recognizing their enormous value, right? (Like Martinez for instance?) I mean obviously Boston has got to be dealing with a problem no city has successfully faced in 150 years right?
Well check out the Jessie blog and in the mean time, keep your eye peeled for something like this.
