IF WE LOOK WE CAN SEE A SHARED HISTORY OF PRETENDING THAT THERE ARE LARGE ANIMALS IN BODIES OF WATER

Today Sweden has officially announced that the Great Lake Monster, a mythical inhabitant of central Sweden's Storsjon lake, will soon be fair game for hunters and curio seekers. Before the proclamation, the animal was protected by Swedish law from Werner Herzog and other international fake-monster bounty hunters.

The American Mastodon wonders what it is, exactly, that makes the myth of a gargantuan serpent so common throughout the world. There is, of course, Scotland's Loch Ness Monster, Norway's "Selma" and Argentina's "Nahuelito". Though these creatures are well known in their own right, no creature has created a collective stir of imagination and awe as was witnessed during the 1949 incident in Churbusco, Indiana, when a young boy, returning to his home a bit tardy on a beautiful summer evening, witnessed what he claimed was a snapping turtle the size of "a small car", thus explaining his otherwise inexplicable late arrival.

Folks, that is a large turtle.

Eventually, as all know, the turtle was given a name (Oscar), search parties were organized and performed diving missions, an international press corps was assembled, and, in the end, a farmer's small pond was drained. The efforts of hundreds of men and women, as it were, turned out to be for naught. For you see, dear reader, the magic of the elusive water monsters is their unparalleled skill in the art of elusion.

Well, either that, or fucking idiots who would believe a 13-year old kid who was out smoking a pack of his dad's Old Gold's behind the local Lutheran church and, after his mother reams him for showing up home late, tells her he saw, "a real big turtle."

Ah, the birth of legends will always amaze.