{"id":7338,"date":"2011-12-13T14:27:22","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T14:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7338"},"modified":"2011-12-13T14:27:22","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T14:27:22","slug":"the-beast-of-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7338","title":{"rendered":"The Beast of London"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just in time for the Olympics, we apparently have a ravenous and mysterious “beast”<\/a> lurking near one of the stadia to be used for the Games. I should say the story has re<\/strong>-surfaced, since it was originally reported way back in 2005.<\/p>\n

\"Suggested<\/p>\n

Of course, the BBC story just says it like it is – but this isn’t enough for the Daily Mail, which as usual feels the need to glam the whole affair up into something it isn’t<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It seems that a Canada Goose got eaten by whatever it was in 2005. Then another one got eaten just last month. Clearly, this points to a man-eating creature which is going to jeopardise the entire Olympics – and possibly the whole of civilisation as we know it. If you’re a Daily Mail hack, that is.<\/p>\n

Bearing in mind that there have only been two confirmed incidents, and that they are almost 7 years apart and may not even be connected, the Mail has linked the affair to the apparent fall in numbers of swans on the strength of this “proof”.<\/p>\n

Better yet is a comment for the Lea Rivers Trust, whose staff reported seeing the goose pulled under in 2005, and finding “large holes… burrowed into the bank of the river”. The Mail story immediately goes on to say it could be a large pike.<\/p>\n

I only wish I could find a picture of an air-breathing, bank-burrowing pike. But they seem to be quite rare.<\/p>\n

British Waterways has had to make an official statement that it doesn’t “believe there is a crocodile in the river”. After the last two winters (and bearing in mind the obvious connection with 2005), that doesn’t come as much of a surprise.<\/p>\n

So far, the list of likely culprits includes alligators, crocodiles, pike, pythons, terrapins, turtles, snapping turtles, or mink.<\/p>\n

At the present time, the problem – if you can call it such – appears to be entirely a terrestrial one, and Nick Pope isn’t <\/strong>on the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just in time for the Olympics, we apparently have a ravenous and mysterious “beast” lurking near one of the stadia to be used for the Games. I should say the story has re-surfaced, since it was originally reported way back in 2005. Of course, the BBC story just says it like it is – but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[99,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-related","category-general-related"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}