Fort Wayne News

Fort Wayne, Indiana

August 8, 1913

 TO CAPTURE STRANGE WATER CREATURE.

Frank Conners and “Daisy” Talmadge left this morning for Hoffman lake, where they will endeavor to bring in, dead or alive, a strange water creature that at time cavorts about the waters of the lake, within sight of fishermen, yet never close enough that anyone can determine to a certainty just what kind of fish or game it might be.  Its presence has been known to persons who live in the vicinity of the lake, and to the visiting fishermen for ten or fifteen years, but it has been appearing more frequently of late and shopmen who spend weekends there have been devising some method for its capture, with the result that Talmadge has incorporated the suggestions of friends and ideas of his own into a contrivance that will bring in the mysterious creature.  Some of the fellows say it is an alligator, but Bill Moeller maintains it is not. He says he was close enough to see it last Sunday [August 3, 1918] and that it has a head like a seal, and a bill of an owl, but the boys at the shops merely say “There ain’t no such animal.”