Jake the Alligator Man
Date: Monday, July 10th, 2006 (CST )
Topic: Animals & Cryptozoology
 It emerged from the swamp to terrorize the world. "What may be man's missing link -- a grotesque, hissing creature with the head and upper body of a human and the dragon-like lower body of an alligator -- has been captured alive just miles from here in the Big Cypress Swamp," began a 1993 cover story in a Florida newspaper.
In May 2000, the Arab Times in Saudi Arabia published a front-page story about the same beast:
"Residents of Dammam have fled the region's beaches in fear after rumors of a terrifying monster lurking amid the sand dunes of the Eastern Province." Both stories featured the same photograph of Jake the Alligator Man, the main attraction at Marsh's Free Museum in Long Beach and quite likely Pacific County's most notorious character.
Jake, a
small mummified creature who appears to be humanlike from the waist up
and an alligator the rest of the way, occupies a glass case in the back
of Marsh's, which also does a brisk business in Jake T-shirts and
postcards.
The photo in both
newspapers was lifted from a Jake postcard. Jake has generated a lot of
press, as evidenced by the newspaper clippings mounted on the wall
behind his glass case. The most blaring headlines appeared in four
editions of the Florida newspaper cited above: the Weekly World News, a
tabloid that publishes news no one else thinks of, such as "I Was
Bigfoot's Love Slave!"
The WWN introduced Jake to the world with the Nov. 9, 1993, headline, "Half-alligator, half-human found in Florida swamp!"
A follow-up story in 1997 announced "Half-alligator, half-human kills Miami man --- and escapes from laboratory!"
The stories produced a tongue-in-cheek warning from the Fort Myers (Fla.) Edition News Press: "Watch out, Southwest Florida!"
Marsh's Free Museum and
Jake have also been written up in Outside magazine, Parade, USA Today
and several newspapers, including this one.
In 2002, the late Grace
Reade of The Daily News took a look at Jake and wrote, "I don't think
I've ever seen anything so weird and gross since Margaret Thatcher
first came to power."
Even Thatcher didn't have the power to terrify Saudi Arabia.
In early 2000, a photo of
Jake circulated in Saudi Arabia accompanied by this ominous caption in
Arabic: "This picture below was taken this morning near the Safaniya
beach in the Eastern Province. ... There are more than 3,500 of this
kind of human-animal in the Tanajib area. ..."
It's not known if the
warning initially appeared in a newspaper, on the Web or if it made the
rounds by e-mail. But it frightened enough people that Dammam, a major
port, closed its beaches, according to the Arab News, a reputable
English-language daily that exposed the hoax in its edition on May 3,
2000.
Despite the debunking, pictures of Jake supposedly basking on a Tanajib beach still circulate on the Web.
Jake's history is a murky swamp before 1967, according to his owners. He might as well have come from outer space.
Web forums devoted to UFO
believers, while not dwelling on Jake per se, go on at length about
otherworldly "reptile men" and "human reptile crossbreed elite" that
supposedly rule the world from an underground lair.
Another possibility: He
could be the product of a scientific experiment gone wrong. For
evidence, check out the 1959 B-movie, "The Alligator People." (Cue
ominous music.) When a wounded man was given an alligator hormone to
heal him, it transformed him into ... an alligator man.
Perhaps Jake can trace his
pedigree to the fabulous human-beast hybrids of mythological lore, like
the satyr or the centaur. The echidna might make a nice mate for him
--- she has the head, arms and torso of a woman, while the rest of her
body is a snake.
But Jake's many fans think
of him as lovable, not scary, and a few have shared their own stories
with owners Marian and Junior Marsh.
Some visitors to Marsh's
said they remember Jake alive and wiggling, smoking cigars and hanging
out in a swanky New Orleans whorehouse.
Others recall him
performing in a sideshow at a Texas carnival, or dressing in drag (as
Minnie the Mermaid) at a San Francisco club.
Sideshow aficionados have
noted his resemblance to hokum artist's P.T. Barnum's "Feejee Mermaid,"
a bizarre creature crafted from the bodies of a fish and baby orangutan
and the head of a monkey. Seattle's Ye Olde Curiosity Shop houses a
Barnum mermaid family. But there's no record that Barnum created Jake.
Marian Marsh said she and
her husband bought Jake for $750 from Whitney's Museum in San Francisco
in 1967. She remembers seeing him long before that, when she was a
little girl.
But as for his origin, she has no idea --- and she prefers it that way.
She said the most common questions she hears are "Is he real?" and "Is he for sale?"
"We wouldn't sell him," she said.
As to whether or not the
leathery-skinned Jake is genuine, she lets visitors decide for
themselves. On a recent Sunday, people of all ages crowded around
Jake's glass case and wondered aloud.
"Is he real?" asked a girl who looked about 17.
Her boyfriend said, "I guess some professor a long time ago found him."
A boy about 10 years old asked, "Where did they find him?"
"I heard on the beach somewhere," said another boy.
Shane Kolar of Seattle, surrounded by his four small children, lifted one kid up while the others fired questions:
"Why is he so small?"
"His teeth are so tiny!"
"Dad, is he real?"
"Yeah, he's real," Kolar solemnly replied. "He's the reptile man."
On the Web: http://www.marshsfreemuseum.com/pages/jake.html
Copyright: The Daily News Online
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