Monster Mysteries

At my house we love a good mystery. We are also suckers for a good monster story. At least until bedtime when it is dark and quiet except for the "Thump, Thump, Thump," that is impossible to pinpoint and there is a scared child convinced there is a monster in the closet and a tarantula in the bed.

Because we love mysteries and are a sucker for a good monster story, we were excited to see the new pictures of the Borneo Monster. Just once, I would like to see one of these pictures accompanied by an article about why it is real, rather than why it is fake. But, the science side of me won out so I did read the article and it made some good points, which I shared with my older son Jack.

He had his own conclusions about why the pictures were real. "His head's poking up. How could they fake that?"

And even though John and I have a heavy background of math and science, we also were lucky enough to get a large dose of creativity and imagination. And I think that helps us encourage creativity and imagination in our kids. Which is what kept me from saying, "Don't be ridiculous. They do it all the time."

Luke asked for me to print out the photos of the Borneo Monster and he showed them around all day. When he took them to my sister's house later, she countered by showing him part of the movie Anaconda.

He came home later talking about the Borneo Monster and I had the same conversation with him that I did with Jack about why some people thought the pictures might be phony. He said they couldn't be fake because there was another snake like that in the movie "Andaconda." If there was one, there had to be two.

"The snake in that movie is definitely not real." I said.

"Yes he is. He's an actor."

Mystery solved.