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I wombat - 2004-10-07 13:12:12
Well I suspect they are the desendants of long lost British and Dutch explorers, forced through circumstance to start a new life among the more hirsute primates.
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Bob - 2004-10-07 19:56:35
Excuse me, (if possible), but are you sayin' they're really wild Boers? I must confess I almost didn't read that link cuz Paula cries Ape so often, but I'm glad I did. And regarding shadowy (but definitely real in this case)beasts, Paula, are you familiar with Foosas? I implore you to read up on them if you're not, and to find photos if you can.
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Bob - 2004-10-07 20:03:33
Oh, and speaking of the Congo, have you read King Leopold's Ghost?
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Paula - 2004-10-08 10:25:22
I'd not heard of either--foosas or King Leopold's Ghost, but as usual the www was instructive. You'll need to scroll down a bit to get to the foosa lore.
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Bob - 2004-10-08 23:54:23
I maximumly recommend K. L. G., even if you don't think you're interested in the Congo. Oh, and I was interested to see in that foosa-related link you posted that there used to be lemurs the size of gorillas. Do you suppose they moved like todays lemurs (which are Hilary's favorite creature)? What that didn't mention is that there used to be a foosa the size of a cougar, which must have been one of the most nightmarish creatures ever (if the appearance of todays foosa is any indication).
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Bob - 2004-10-09 12:54:18
And finding out that the no-doubt ridiculous movie Congo was based on a somewhat less ridiculous Crichton book that was actually based on these real, more-or-less mysterious, "killer" chimps, was an interesting parallel to "Jaws". Because Peter Benchley's somewhat-less-ridiculous-than-the-movie book was inspired by five very real attacks that happened in two weeks in New Jersey in 1916. And Hollywood was either oblivious to the real story, or found it altogether too astounding and grisly for mass consumption, especially because the white shark apparently responsible for at least three of the attacks was a plausible one third the length of the Hollywood robot. Every one of the attacks happened in front of numerous people, and three of them, amazingly enough, happened twelve miles due WEST of Highlands, New Jersey. This was obviously a strangely wired shark, because after swimming two miles up a creek/canal from Sandy Hook Bay, it first made a boy skinny-dipping with his friends mysteriously disappear under water in a pool of blood, which sent the boys running naked into Matawan, from which a shopkeeper returned and dove into the deep part of the creek, with townspeople crowded around, only to surface with his thigh bit off, and then die three hours later while waiting with a tourniquet for a train to show up to take him to the nearest hospital, (granted, those three hours wouldn't have worked in a movie)... then it proceeded back down the creek, still unseen, and managed to grab the last-boy-in-the-water's calf at the next swimming hole, to which someone from Matawan had run to warn the boys out of the water, and they managed to yank the boy, who survived to walk again, out of its teeth, still without any one of the by-now-hundreds of witnesses to the attacks in the two weeks seeing the shark. (The earlier two attacks were in the ocean at crowded resort towns.)
A well-researched account (based on newspaper stories from the time) can be found in the first chapter of "Shadows in the Sea: The Sharks, Skates, and Rays", which is worth looking into at the library, if you're interested in some bizarre New Jersey history.
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Bob - 2004-11-11 15:12:02
Either this is a really stupid coincidence, or someone's been cadging ideas from our friend Paula's blog, and churning very quickly with 'em. Surfing for Foos photos a month later, I just ran across this blurb on Midpoint Trade Books, for a book that is coming out in December, optimistically priced at $24.95.:: ""Foosa! Primal Instinct!" tells the story of Blaine Gibbons, a young field researcher working in Madagascar, as he and a team of experts search for signs of a murderous creature thought to be long extinct - the giant fossa.//Soon, a freak incident involving a great white shark makes it abundantly clear to all involved that the giant fossa, known to locals as "foosa," has indeed returned.//As the death toll mounts, Blaine and his colleagues find themselves in a race to find the foosa and end its bloody rampage.//Follow Blaine and his fellow adventurers in "Foosa! Primal Instint," a new page-turner that mixes fact and fiction with explosive results."
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Bob - 2004-11-11 15:18:48
That should read "surfing for Foosa photos", of course;; I don't surf for Foos (or their photos).
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Bob - 2004-11-11 15:23:31
And just remember, Reality is for Elitists.
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Edward Joseph Begen - 2005-10-12 14:44:47
Yes, I wrote the novel and going by the comments from all who have read it, I'd say it would be worth the adventure to explore its readability.
Look it up on Google.
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