Home > Work > River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones that Didn't Get Away
1 " ...I'm momentarily transfixed, torn between curiosity and fear. I can pull it up the gently sloping mud bank, but then what? Already thought is lagging behind events, as the blotchy brown mass slides up wet mud toward me, its amorphous margins flowing into the craters left by retreating feet. In the center of the yard-wide disc is a raised turret where two eyes open and close, flashing black. And it's bellowing. A loud rhythmic sound that is at first inexplicable until I realize that those blinking eyes are its spiracles, now sucking in air instead of water, which it is pumping out via gill slits on its underside. And all the while it brandishes that blade, stabbing the air like a scorpion... "
― , River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones that Didn't Get Away
2 " To a large extent we see what we want to see rather than what is really there. "
3 " Because, despite our differences, we shared one fundamental belief: that there is more to this world than what’s visible on the surface. "
4 " Once a myth becomes established, it forms part of our mental model of the world and alters our perception, the way our brains interpret the fleeting patterns our eyes pick up. "
5 " Casting a line into the water is like asking a question. Something could be right underneath you, but you can’t see it—it’s there but not there. "
6 " I became aware that I was repeating certain actions: checking that doors were locked, cookers were turned off, basins and toilet bowls were clean. Connected with these things were strange, repetitive rituals: "
7 " But the biggest gar he ever heard of was never weighed. It got caught in a gillnet his grandfather set in the St. Francis River in the early 1900s and had to be pulled in with the help of a mule and then finished off with a shotgun. For years its scales were used as ashtrays. "
