Skid Roche

I’m not sure what’s in the water over there in Vodkaville, but apparently it’s damn tasty. Back in February, fishermen from the Russian Rostov Oblast caught themselves an unusual 100-kilometer aquatic creature after a storm in the Sea of Azov, near the Ukranian border. (I’m not sure what kind of lure they were using, but I bet even your Grandpa Bill doesn’t know how to tie it.)

Believing they’d hooked a creature from another world or at least the beast from 20,000 fathoms, the fishermen broke out the cell phone camera and captured video of the sharklike creature, viewable at Pravda. The thing squirmed around a bit and made some strange squeaky sounds… kind of the least you’d expect, eh?

Andrei Gorodovoi, the Chairman of Russia’s Anomalous Phenomena Service, said upon inspecting the video that the creature was indeed anomalous, but probably wasn’t an alien: “There are many legends about mermaids living in the sea of Azov,” he said.

All of which is very exciting for cryptozoologists worldwide, but even more so for Anthony Bourdain. In an unexplained and unilateral action, these first-contact feasters decided to break out the barbie and snack till they cracked. You heard me: “They said that they were not scared of the creature so they decided to use it as food. One of the men said that it was the most delicious dish he had ever eaten.”

Yeah, well… Ivan’s obviously never tasted my Nessie kabobs.

Alexander Lipkovich of the Rostov Zoo told Pravda that members of Rostov’s thriving ichthyology community told him Ol’ Squealy probably wasn’t an alien. “They said that the fish bears resemblance to a sturgeon… I have never seen anything like this before in my whole life,” enthused Lipkovich. Readers of Neil Gaiman’s site expressed the opinion that the squeaking alien was some sort of guitarfish, a species that shares habitat with the banjofish and the fiddlefish, hopefully making for a little Foggy Mountain Breakdown on alternate Thursdays, no cover, two-drink minimum.

Regardless, the decision of the fishermen to chow down seems kinda inexplicable. Whether their delicious dish was a spacefaring ambassador from Beta-Omicron XVI, a crypto cutie from the depths of the Azov, or a squealing sturgeon, we’ll never know. But since the fishermen who found the thing seem to be the only ones who thought it was an alien… you just gotta wonder. Is this how interplanetary holocausts begin? Pray with me.