From: Philip St. George, thenorthbaybay.ca staff
NORTH BAY — A group of 14 local fishermen are saying that the trash left on Lake Nipissing shouldn’t be blamed on them, but should instead be attributed to the “Nipissing Poop Monster.”
The group explains that a large, “9 foot tall, twelve-legged monster” has repeatedly appeared on Lake Nipissing, where it has been spreading garbage, defecating, and in two cases, has burned down ice shacks.
Rolph Page is one of the men who claims to have seen the monster.
“Oh, yeh, I’ve seen ‘ar alright,” says Page. “Jus last week, me two buddies and I, we takkin’ tha shack off’r de ice. We did’r good. Nothin’ left nowheres. But den, this monster shows up, trowing trash everywhare, pooping on da ice.”
“Musta been 12 feet tall, eyes like augers. Well, we all runnin’ and, wouldn’t ya know it, a officer comes by and tickets us fer leavin’ trash. An ‘ol officer don’t believe me when I say the monster done did it.”
Others Come Forward
Other fishermen have made similar claims.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” says constant fisher Mose Brasher. “I was trying to take my shack off the ice, but it was frozen hard into the lake. So, I was getting ready to spend hours and hours tediously chipping away at the ice to get it out. But just then, this huge creature that exactly matches whatever the other guys were talking about comes out of the ice and burns my 100% insurance-covered ice shack to the ground!”
“I couldn’t do anything but watch it burn.”
All 14 men are banding together to fight against a litany of tickets, ranging from improper disposal of an ice shack, failing to remove a shack or temporary shelter from the ice, fishing without a license, improper disposal of human waste, arson, failure to register an ice shack, and possessing an oyster that is less than the specified length.
“It weren’t us, though!” says Page. “It weren’t us! It were the Nipissing Poop Monster!”