Staten Island is famous (or infamous) for many things, but monsters and cryptids are not really among them. Sure, we’ve had lots of UFO sightings, creepy clowns, mystery sounds, alligators in the sewers, and even a Bigfoot sighting back in the ’70s, but sadly (for me, anyways) we don’t have a cryptid, a Staten Island Devil, as it were. But this past weekend, buzz began swirling about our own version of the Montauk Monster washing up on a Staten Island beach. Was it a chupacabra? A unique Staten Island cryptid? Or, like it’s Long Island cousin, just a dead, bloated raccoon? Was there now a Montauk Monster on Staten Island? I’ll give you three guesses.
I’m fairly certain that just like the original Montauk Monster, this is simply a dead raccoon. A sea otter and a dog are also good guesses, but this looks an awful lot like the Montauk creature, so I’d say it’s simply a raccoon. It looks almost identical to the dead raccoon that was the Montauk monster, and there’s no reason to think that this is anything other than the carcass of a known animal. So for now, unfortunately, Staten Island must remain monsterless. Unless you count the people who insist on saying “mootzadell” when they are referring to mozzarella cheese.
