Water Beasts

For the definitive beastiary, I’m delighted bowsprite has me bested, but enjoy my beasts.  First, can you guess the creature shown below and its location.  It was taken a few weeks ago by a co-worker, Carol Biederstadt.

And six weeks ago and 60 degrees colder than today, dogs and iceboats . . .

More dogs and iceboats.  These dogs just wanna …  go gliding,  just as other dogs love to stick their heads out of  car and truck windows.

Less common might be dogs on tugboats.  Matt of Soundbounder caught this dog aboard Petersburg on Block Island a while back.  Thanks, Matt.  By the way, scroll through Matt’s February posts on various commercial fishing  industries on Long Island Sound.

Wharves  can produce a bountiful living for felines like Chiclet.

In the iceboaters parking lot near Tivoli Bay, I caught this bumper sticker, and it turns out this points us toward very strange urban animal legend with its own Uncyclopedia article, sort of;

it’s like another beast that prompted a press conference recently in front of City Hall proclaiming the February 9 to be “Alligator in the Sewers” Day;  in 1935, the NYTimes ran a story about the sighting of an eight-foot 120-pound alligator in the city sewer.  The speaker behind the podium is Michael Miscione, Manhattan borough historian.  See Newyorkology coverage here.

Here’s the proclamation.

Off to look for more animals.  Year of the Tiger . . . steaks anyone?  OK, I must have a vessel of some sort in this post.  Thanks to Harold Tartell, a high-n-dry West coast tug, one I’ve never seen:  Woooo-huuuu!

The top foto shows a harp seal on the beach in Spring Lake, New Jersey.  It was alive–in spite of the cut visible on its back–and taken to the Marine Mammal Standing Center in Brigantine, NJ, where Carol works as a volunteer.  Coincidentally, read this story about one was spotted this winter all the way up in Kingston, NY’s Rondout Creek.  I saw a seal in the KVK a few weeks ago, but it was swimming quickly and I couldn’t get a foto.

Many thanks to Carol for her foto of seal, Matt for dog, and Harold for Tiger.   If you’ve any good water beast shots, I’d love to see them.

Meanwhile, for a preview of new movie on this topic, check out SeaFever.