Dan's Papers - August 8, 2008 - Twentysomething...By David Lion Rattiner

Last week I was showing some houses to a real estate customer when the topic of Montauk came up.

"What do you think of Montauk?" my customer asked.

"It's great. I live there myself. The surfing scene and fishing scene are sensational, and it is its own little paradise, very laidback. Just the other day I was at the grocery store and waved hello to Jimmy Buffett. The only problem is that it is the furthest place to get to on the South Fork."

"All of that is true, but do you think that the water's safe there? I heard that a monster washed up on shore. There was this whole thing on CNN, and the monster carcass looked really dangerous."

"I don't think you have to worry about monsters in Montauk," I said.

Was I really saying this to an adult? I thought. Do we all really believe that there are Montauk Monsters? Perhaps a whole slew of them swimming around underwater, ready to take over? I think that the question, "Do you think I should buy a house in Montauk even though there are monsters in the water?" takes the cake when it comes to my real estate career so far. But people are really freaking out about this thing.

What has been amazing to me about the Montauk Monster is how quickly it became national news. I was literally sitting at my desk at Dan's Papers, trying to think of something to put up on the danshamptons.com blog, when I got a random e-mail from a woman who had gotten her hands on a picture of an unidentifiable, decomposing animal that had washed ashore in Montauk. I thought to myself, that's interesting, and put the email with the picture up on the blog. Everybody in the office was hooting and hollering, weighing in with their opinions. "It's a turtle without its shell," seemed to be the consensus.

Literally hours after posting the picture of the monster, my dad got a call from someone at Fox News who wanted to know what he thought it was. So, my dad called me.

"Do you know what it is?" he asked.

"I have no idea, I just got this random e-mail. They are saying that fishermen found it."

I watched in amazement as Fox News started asking my dad questions about the Montauk Monster. The one thing that is for certain is that this is not a Dan Rattiner hoax, and there actually was an animal that washed ashore, and nobody knows what it is. We checked the web site count for the week for danshamptons.com. It had tripled. People really like a good mystery.

After that, cnn.com put a video up on their web site of the story with a full investigation, which found pretty much nothing except that Plum Island denies that they have been up to anything of the mutant animal nature. And then from there, the Montauk Monster went from strange e-mail to legend. And nobody knows a dang thing. But people went nuts over it. I later found out that Montauk locals Jenna Hewitt, Rachel Goldberg and Courtney Fruin found the carcass of the Montauk Monster, and think that it may be a dead raccoon. Others, however, disagree. My friend and Eastern Surf Magazine photographer James Katsipis started a Facebook fan club for the Montauk Monster - it had more than 300 members after just a few days.

I can tell you that after looking at the picture, my opinion is that this thing is not a turtle, and doesn't look anything like a raccoon. My guess is it's a baby rhinoceros.