Have you seen Jake?
Do you think this is a coincidence?
OSLO (Reuters) - An international team of monster hunters unveiled a giant trap Wednesday for catching a
fabled serpent, reputed to be a cousin of Scotland's Loch Ness monster, in a lake in south Norway.
"This is the first serpent trap of its kind in the world," Jan Sundberg, a Swede leading a team of 12 experts,
told Reuters. The team comprises seven Swedes, three Norwegians, a Canadian and a Belgian. The
18-foot-long tube-shaped trap, comprising a metal frame with nylon netting, will be lowered into Seljord
lake in south Norway. It will contain live whitefish for bait to catch an elusive beast known to locals as
"Selma."
"The trap is adapted from a fish trap for eels. If anything up to about six meters long swims in one end, the
opening closes and it won't be able to get out," said Sundberg, a veteran of several inconclusive high-tech
scans of the murky lake.
Over the next two weeks, the team will dangle the cage in the lake, about 110 miles (170 km) southwest of
Oslo, at depths of between 30 and 100 meters near where sightings of the monster have been reported.
Two biologists at the University of Oslo were on standby to fly down by helicopter and take tests if the trap
worked. "We'll take a DNA sample, document the serpent and then release it into the lake," he said. "We will
be very careful not to hurt it."
Experts on land would also try to track any unexplained movements underwater with hydraphones and
sonars to help experts on a floating platform move the trap quickly to a promising spot.
Sundberg said the team recorded mysterious whale-like noises during a visit in 1999. "We'd be disappointed
if we don't get some kind of result this time...the only evidence scientists would accept is a dead or a live
serpent," he said.
The beast was first spotted around 1750, and most accounts agree it looks like a serpent with the head of an
elk or a horse. Seljord is a town of about 1,500 people at the head of the picturesque lake, about 15 km
(nine miles) long.
In recent years, Seljord has tried to imitate Loch Ness in attracting tourists. In 1986, the local council
changed Seljord's coat of arms to portray a sea serpent. |
