Dubbed the Manhattan monster, a horrifying mysterious creature with a mutilated face, snarling snout and five toes on each foot was washed up under the Brooklyn Bridge, perplexing New Yorkers. Amateur photographer Denise Ginley snapped the ghoulish pink carcass while walking along the East River on Sunday and the grisly images, first published by The Gothamist on Monday, have sparked an array of conspiracy theories as to whether it is a giant water-logged rodent, a cooked pig that a family couldn't fit in, a ballooned dog or some other, more sinister, being.
'We were horrified by it and we took some camera phone pictures and then finally we decided to come back with my camera and I got up the courage to climb over the fence and get closer to it,' Ms Ginley told blog Animal NY. Denise Ginley took some horrifying photos of a bloated, dead animal this weekend. "Is this another incarnation of the Montauk Monster?" she asked Gothamist. "Or just the biggest rat in the city?"
Ginley was going for a stroll Sunday when she made the grisly discovery. She stated, "We were walking on the esplanade along the East River beneath the FDR. We found the dead creature lying on the strip of sand beside the East River, on the Manhattan side, directly beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. It looked like the tide probably washed the carcass up there along with some driftwood." If the animal was indeed a rat, it wouldn't be the first time a giant rodent has been spotted in New York City. (See: Foot Locker and the Marcy Houses.) And if it was not a rat, it's not the first time a bloated, dead creature has confounded the region.
It's unclear what this thing actually is—there's some chatter that it's the second-coming of the "Montauk Monster," which was found washed up on the shore near Montauk in 2008 and determined to probably be a bloated raccoon. This monster, however, looks more like a bloated pig or rat—if you ask us, anyway.