All of this got me pondering some of the "monster sightings". Could these things be logically explained or are they merely slick photography skills? When observing most of the "evidence" of the monsters, I noticed that most if not all of the pictures are incredibly blurry. Personally, I would be embarrassed to publish such a picture and claim it was a rare sighting. My goodness, Folks! Take a clear picture if you want anyone to believe your claims! That said, I looked at a few of my photographs and could clearly understand how some with active imaginations might "see" a monster or "something unexplained"! Why even I cannot explain some of these pictures! Still that does not mean there are Bayou Monsters...or are there?????
Take a look at the above picture. If you let your imagination fly, perhaps you could see a Lake Monster! The humps of the critter do bear a strong resemblance to a certain Nessie! When I took this picture, the darkness of the early morn fully obscured a clear vision. Was that a Sea Monster out in the water? Or perhaps a large (very large!) snake? Perhaps if I had shook the camera a bit causing the photo to be blurry, I could have made that claim..but I had not!
No...this was not another Loch Ness Monster, it was just our friendly otter making a hasty retreat. I had come to the pier quietly enough that the otter had not heard my footsteps. The flash from my camera startled the poor thing enough that it swam all the way to the other side of the Bayou before turning to bark at me! You can see in the picture above that two otters were playing near the pier before I disturbed them!
Then there was this fine picture! What in the World could poke out of the water in such a strange way? This picture should fit all the demands of the "Monster Photography Claims Club". One..it is something with a very strange appearance and two..it is blurry! Bingo! I think this picture surely depicts a Bayou Monster! I giggled over what might have been published in some of the so-called "news stories" about this picture! What, oh what, could that be??? A monster for sure!
I am quite sure that Old Gus might take offense to being called a monster if he had read a news article labeling him as such! With his head low and his wings tucked but held high, Old Gus can present quite a good imitation of some strange entity! He is surely no monster, though! Old Gus is a perfect sweetheart! He and most of the critters of the Bayou and Bay can be observed in some pretty unusual positions, add to that a little fog or mist and a remarkably strange and eerie picture might evolve!
It started out as another foggy, foggy morning..so foggy that sitting on the pier was sort of senseless. I was there only a short while before I began to feel the effects of the cold, clammy air. The everyday noises of the Bayou awakening started to sound a mite eerie..sort of like the special effects of a horror movie. I had just read last night where there were reports of another "Loch Ness" type "monster" reported this time on Lake Windemere in England. ("Nessie"gets around a lot!) I sat there this morning thinking how it would be easy to imagine something like that being in my Bayou in this fog! I can remember fishing with my dad one foggy morning and seeing something that we could not explain at the time. Our "monster" appeared right next to the boat and loomed larger than anything we had ever seen before. We could see the eyes and face of this creature as it stuck its huge head out of the water. It was not a gar or alligator..we were used to those. It was not some animal such as a otter or raccoon..much larger than those and not "furry". It seemed to be close to twelve feet long and was definitely a "sea" creature. At the time, our "monster" was a bit frightening to me simply because it was the "unknown". Dad (not one to show fear) looked at me and nonchalantly said.."Lets push in a bit closer to shore." I knew then that he did not know what we had just seen. Our "Nessie"..our "sea monster"..our unknown creature..my mind raced at what this could be. This was back before cell phone cameras so there was no way handy to photograph our critter. We did not talk much about it..it was one of those things that you just let slide in hopes that others did not think you were too batty! Then later that week, another sighting..a news crew reported that a manatee was sighted in the Back Bay! Our friend was identified! Dad and I sure felt better!
