9/24/2003: Ugly-ass Cuban mammal not extinct

[Undertoad]

Happy Wednesday! No, this isn't an animal shot, because this is not the real animal. This is a stuffed model of it. And I wouldn't dare bring this out on a Friday. Come on.

This is an "almiqui". It was thought to be extinct, but then a Cuban farmer found one. They brought it out to study it for two days (and I guess to help build this model) and returned it to its habitat in the eastern mountains of Cuba.

During the daytime, they say, it burrows underground. It only comes out at night when it can forage for insects.

And because it's so nocturnal, people never see it, and so they thought there were no more.

Or so the schoolchildren had hoped. Now they have to live with the idea that this thing might, just might, be coming out of its hidey-hole, late at night after they've gone to bed, poking through the darkness for some flesh it can rip open with its snarling gnashy teeth. Did you feel its little snout poke you? Boo!

Only one Cuban vermin uglier than that one: