Last summer, the New York metro area was riveted by the never-satisfactorily identified dead creature known as “the Montauk Monster.” This week, South Florida proves to have its own slow-summer-news-day gimmick: a strange animal that lurks beneath the surface of the Lake Worth Lagoon in West Palm Beach. Locals have given it the suspiciously alliterative name “the Muck Monster” (despite the lack of any association with muck), and the local news has aired video of the thing gliding through the lagoon. They even consulted with an amused marine biologist!
While the obvious answer to some might be a large fish or misplaced stingray, anyone who read that terrifying New Yorker article about invasive species in Florida last April (or has been to a cocktail party in New York since said article came out) knows exactly what the muck monster is: a huge Burmese python, slowly making its way to the mid-Atlantic states.
