Indiana Officials Insist Report of Giant Man-Eating Turtle Lurking in Lake Monroe Is False
It was a tall tale after all.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources is slapping down rumors started by a viral Facebook post that a 9-foot, 300-year-old snapping turtle was biting people’s heads off at Lake Monroe in Bloomington.
“Things we never thought we’d need to post,” the agency began in a Facebook posting on Monday.
“Rest easy, there is NOT a giant man-eating snapping turtle in Monroe Lake. The hoax Facebook post claiming a man had died from a snapping turtle attack is completely false and had over 16,000 shares – emphasizing the importance of checking sources when reading something shocking or out of ordinary,” the statement continued.
“Luckily with these kinds of wildlife related stories, you can always directly ask us! Feel free to reach out about any tall tales you may hear regarding Indiana’s fish and wildlife,” the DNR said, adding cheekily: “While we’re here – nope, we did not release rattlesnakes from helicopters.”
It included a meme of a mean-looking turtle with the headline: “The face you make when someone skips the fact check.”
The rumors were given life by a Facebook posting from the night before that went viral, racking up more than 12,000 shares.
It came from an account owned by Kevin Goodman of Judah, Ind., who prefaced the post with a disclaimer: “This post does not reflect an actual news story and was written as satire.”
It went on to say that forensic scientists at Purdue University “announced today that the decapitated human remains discovered in Lake Monroe last week appear to have been the result of a gruesome attack by a giant snapping turtle, potentially the largest ever recorded.”
He claimed one of the purported biologists, Dr. Eric Paddlejack, “estimates the turtle could measure as large as 9 feet in diameter and be around 300 years old, making it the largest and oldest snapping turtle ever discovered in North America.”
He said the body, sans head, was found by a local fisherman on July 10 who contacted law enforcement.
Goodman’s far-fetched account said Paddlejack was brought in to help with the investigation.
“‘We examined the nature of the wounds, the size, the pattern, and the spacing,’ Paddlejack explained. ‘They were consistent with an extraordinarily large snapping turtle,’” Goodman wrote.
He eventually copped to writing the tale of the 9-foot-tall turtle, admitting that he has joked about “writing a screenplay in the tradition of Lake Placid about a giant man-eating snapping turtle in Lake Monroe.”
“I liked the idea because snapping turtles are large primitive scary-looking creatures, and yet, to the best of my knowledge, the idea of man-eating snapping turtles is novel. But I felt it could be done with an air of plausibility,” he said.
Goodman said he thought about writing it for the satirical news outlet The Onion, noting: “I thought this would be a good test for proof-of-concept for a screenplay.”
“The article I posted on my personal Facebook page was really meant for a handful of people who knew about my project. Yes – I did want it to go viral, BUT I never imagined it would go viral from my personal Facebook page. I considered the article a draft, and I was looking for feedback and did not imagine it would escape my immediate circle of friends,” he said in his mea culpa, adding “movie rights are for sale.”
