CASE 6 - Morag

Great news! My old pal Tom has just been released from his recent stay ‘at Her Majesty’s pleasure’, and he wasted no time in phoning up YetiSmack with his latest plan for monster violence; the fucking maniac!

You may remember Tom from my first ever crypto-hunt at Loch Ness, where we tracked down Nessie, then got hammered and he got arrested. I then had to evade the local constabulary by hiding in a bush whilst he was carted off for nicking gas canisters.

Tom’s a great guy, though I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying he’s a bit mental. It’s not his fault, he got stuck in a bouncy castle when he was eight. He was in there for an hour before the mannie noticed his Hi-Tecs were still sitting there. By that point there were rowdy teenagers doing somersaults and necking, so he got his head knocked about a bit.

Since then he doesn’t like enclosed spaces. Or bouncy castles. The claustraphobia’s unfortunate since he regularly spends time in ‘confined areas’, though I doubt the bouncy castle thing affects him much.

Tom reported that he had put his Nessie capture plan on hold to go after another Scottish water monster. Yep, Loch Ness is not the only loch to hold a cryptid. Loch Morar also has a lurking nonce.

Artist's impression of Morag, complete with 'mad eyes'.
Tom 2011.

This cryptid’s known as ‘Morag’. Hmm… Flogging fluffy wee toys and fridge magnets to tourists is probably a lot easier if it’s called something cute like ‘Morag’ or ‘Nessie’. I doubt there’s so much tourist tat available for the ‘Mongolian death worm’.

Which is a shame, but I don’t know what you’d call it. ‘Mongy’? Not likely to be such a big seller. And probably offensive to just about everyone.

I have nothing against selling shite to visitors. Hell, fill your boots guys! Sell them rocks and bottled fucking mud for all I care. I heard someone was selling Hebridean seawater to restaurants. Good. I like to think someone’s boiling up a lobster in the water that drains my uncle’s septic tank.

Flog it all off. Some people are so gullible.

Tom told me he’d already seen the beast! It was dark and he was probably very well refreshed, but he was adamant that he saw a huge serpent-like head and neck emerge from the loch and scan the area. But was it Morag?

Possible explanations for sighting.
YetiSmack 2011.

Just to be on the safe side, he later made a sketch (above) of the only three other explanations for what he saw. Intriguing, but let's apply some science to the situation...

Well, the first possibility is a ‘duck or something’. But the duck would have its body OUT OF THE WATER, unless it had reduced buoyancy resulting from a big supper, which is unlikely due to a lack of bread crumbs in the immediate vicinity. Ducks are also usually the size of a duck, so not massive. He didn’t hear any quacking, which would be a total give-away. So, not a ‘duck or something’.

‘Diver with a hose’ is very much possible, but Tom reckons the beast winked at him; a typically cheeky action from a crypto-bint. Hoses DO NOT HAVE EYES and are incapable of winking or blinking. Therefore, it wasn’t a hose.

It was unlikely to be a ‘balloon animal’ as it would be burst on jaggy rocks or when attacked by an eagle defending its chicks, as they are wont to do. That happened to a rubber ring I had once: a big seagull mauled it and then pooped on it. Those animals have no fucking dignity.

No, it had to be Morag.

I met Tom by the loch and was immediately impressed with his latest scheme. He was building nothing less than a submarine. Fantastic! He’d taken inspiration from the latest Hunter-Killer submarine that the Royal Navy have just gotten hold of. You know, the one that ran aground off Skye and made them look like arseholes.

She was called 'The Violent Gannet', which is a lovely name. Much better than 'Shiteanic', as the locals were calling it.

The Violent Gannet in all her resplendent glory.
YetiSmack 2011.

Tom, as usual, had some shocking news for me: I’d just missed a terrifying second encounter with Morag. The night before, he’d been doing some final technical alterations to the submarine steering systems, and having a few beers, and he was attacked by Morag!

He played his audio recording to me and I nearly shat my spine out my arse. Sorry to be so graphic, but it was the horrible guttural sound of a primeval beast ready to prey on humanity. It sounded like a seal shagging an inflatable mattress.

I am serious, this is a bum-spasm inducing noise. Only listen to it if you have all your faculties. If you’ve had heart surgery or are a bit of a fanny, then just don’t listen. Put it this way, I wouldn't allow my granny to hear this, and I once allowed her to watch Gremlins 2 with me; which is the third scariest film behind Arachnophobia and the 'bad gorillas' in Congo.

Perhaps get a hard mate to listen and report back. I guarantee, it’ll still be scary. This is balls-to-the-wall freaky even by osmosis.

He managed to capture all this on his Dictaphone, whilst lying under a crate of tuna. In fact it’s my Dictaphone, but he somehow has it now. No matter. He could see something huge and dark out of the portholes, with what seemed to be tentacles scratching and groping the flanks of the sub. It was then Tom realised his peril: Morag was mating!

Luckily, Tom had a pan of beans on the go and, thinking quickly, he lobbed it out the door at Morag. Then he passed out. When he woke up, there was water everywhere. Morag must have known what he was up to and had tried to sink the sub; that or humped it half to death.

Well I was ecstatic. Here I was on a loch, in a soggy submarine, with my mate and a few beers. We were off on another cryptid adventure! But this time it was a randy cryptid, which was new one for even an experienced crypto-hunter like myself.

I helped Tom with the new post-coital waterproofing problem. We ran out of superglue, so we bought some toffee from the shop and soaked a load of bars and jammed them into the holes. It worked really well, and if you got peckish, you could give the caulking a lick for a lovely taste of toffee.

Up yer arse Willy Wonka, Tom’s got a toffee flavoured submarine!

Tom's control console: surprisingly complicated.
YetiSmack 2011.

Just as we were casting off for the expedition, a guy came down from the other side of the loch to complain about the noise and the state of some fir trees that were damaged recently. Tom looked sheepish, but denied all knowledge.

It was about this point that we realised the fatal flaw in the submarine. It might be possible to see by the above photo, but it’s not technically a submarine. It’s floating too much: if anything it’s TOO successful. Any scientist will tell you that the point in a submarine is for it to sink. The trick is in sinking it in a ‘controlled manner’.

Also, the propellers don’t reach the water.

We weren’t sure how best to go about the half-sinking, as we termed it. I wanted to remove some of the toffee, but Tom just kicked a hole in the floor. Well that certainly got her going. Water was pishing in at quite a successful rate, and Tom was splashing around in what was now the bilge, trying to retrieve his tinnies.

By this point we’d floated out into the middle of the loch and were clearly going down. I abandoned ship, but Tom was determined to go down with the ship. This lasted until the water touched his nipples, and he jumped out too.

We watched the Violent Gannet go down, then swam to the shore.

It was a dissapointing end to a very promising expedition. But I'm not one to be downhearted, you can't win them all. Tom provided some excellent evidence for Morag's existence, and I'll be back to give her a good kick on the chops another time.Next time I'll bring my own dingy.

Tom has since sent me the below photo, but I’m not sure about him anymore. It would be incredible if true, but elements of it just don't stack up. Would a captain wear his hat sideways like that?

Attack on pleasure craft by unknown cryptid, Loch Morar.
Tom 2011.