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Michell and Rickard take us on a tour of the bizarre end of the animal kingdom which introduces Charles Fort to the Guinness Book of Records. Not the biggest, smallest, heaviest or fastest, but the 'strangest, the most out of place and the most disturbing! In four sections the book reviews those creatures which couldn't be or shouldn't be; those which are but shouldn't be where they are; those that should be where they are, but shouldn't be doing what they're doing; and finally those which probably could be doing what they are, but nobody' s quite certain about it.
In the first category come such classics as sea-monsters, ape-men and the dinosaurs allegedly splashing about in the Congo. This first section also includes a valuable brief history of crypto-zoology, and some of the people who have been hunting mystery animals often almost as weird as themselves.
Part Two looks at the strange appearances of animals in showers, swarms and shoals. The authors hint at teleportation as a mechanism for these sudden appearances, but like true Forteans they have a deep-seated (and shrewd) objection in principle to explanations of any kind. Part Three looks at smart horses, faithful dogs and homing cats. Part Four is in one way the most interesting part of the book. It looks at those things that once were taken for granted: man-eating trees and birds that kidnapped children were once quite unremarkable; everyone knew that swallows hibernated in the bottoms of ponds, and that monkeys bridged rivers by hanging on to each others' tails. Now... we're not so sure.
Forteans, ufologists and others often assume that today's mysteries will be understood in the future, and will be revealed to have natural explanations . But the lesson we learn here from Michell and Rickard is that it is just as likely that today's natural explanations will in the future flutter away, like swallows from a lake-bottom, leaving us with new mysteries. As we expect from this duo the illustrations are a treasure house, make of them what you will. Essential for everyone who doesn't believe everything they read in books - including this one!
John Rimmer. From Magonia 12, 1983
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