“Para Volverse Mono,” from Argentina, features monkeys and bananas.  It was given as a premium with the magazine Genios.  The title might be translated (loosely!) as “Go Ape!” (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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Here, as a Christmas treat, is the story of “The Monkey and the Parrot,” written by Alphonse Allais in 1899, and translated by the undersigned this afternoon. THE MONKEY AND THE PARROT Speaking of parrots, do you know the Persian fable of “The Monkey and the Parrot,” a story both ingenious and rich in instruction [...]

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I know that people occasionally strap on wooden feet to hoax bigfoot tracks, but had never seen any until I found this pair at the flea market.  They measure 19 inches, and are roughly carved from a knotty wood (I assume pine, but someone else may know better), and are untreated.  They show some cracking [...]

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Two-headed turtles are not particularly rare.  I’ve seen a couple; films are online.  You can even buy one from a turtle supplier, if you have the money (they’re expensive). I’ve never seen such a detailed description, though, as the one that appeared in the May 1889 issue of St. Nicholas magazine.  In “A Queer Pet,” [...]

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In dog math, 2 + 1 makes 4: further evidence that anthropomorphic systems are not objective. (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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In the days of big Sunday comics sections, many strips spread out over a whole page, and included a “topper strip”: a sort of short subject before the feature.  Some cartoonists used them to spin off a character from the main strip (particularly children and cats); some to revive an older idea; some to indulge [...]

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While thumbing through a scrapbook of lodge emblems, I found this anthropomorphic frog, who apparently represents some of the activities of the Knights Templar — that is, the Masonic order, not the original 12th century group.  Frogs can symbolize many things; I can’t say what he means here.  But I like the Templar Frog; and [...]

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Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) was an ardent naturalist, and earned a bit of notoriety in his time for his research into the language of birds.  In his 1807 work, Quelques mémoires sur différens sujets, la plupart d’histoire naturelle, ou de physique générale et particulière (Some notes on different subjects, mostly on natural [...]

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There are many reports of Alien Big Cats (ABC’s, as their devotees like to call them) in the fortean database.  This one, which I found in the French daily Libération (July 25, 1994), and passed along to the INFO Journal at the time, seems to have been overlooked.  I was unable to find a follow-up, [...]

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Spiritualism was all the rage in France in the 1850s; like many others, Victor Hugo and his household experimented with seances, table-rapping, and channeled communications.  This intriguing drawing dates from sometime around 1854. Hugo’s large body of graphic work may be unfamiliar to some of you: he left behind more than 3500 drawings.  He had a particular [...]

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