Summary: <p>This week we’re in Ireland learning about the dobhar-chú, a vicious creature that might be an otter but might be a KING otter! Either way, it’s a killer.</p> <p>The weird creature carved on Grace Connolly’s gravestone:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-355" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/dobharchu2-300x191-300x191.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="191"></p> <p>How can such an adorable floof be so MURDEROUS? Please note: sneaky tongue blep. Eurasian otter:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-356" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/otter-300x160.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="160"></p> <p>The giant otter (from South America) imitating a sea serpent (hmm):</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-357" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/giantotter1.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="137"></p> <p>Giant otter has teeth:</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-358" src="http://strangeanimalspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/giantotter2.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="186"></p> <p><strong>Further reading:</strong></p> <p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2801469-the-search-for-the-last-undiscovered-animals"><em>The Search for the Last Undiscovered Animals</em></a> by Karl PN Shuker</p> <p><strong>Show transcript:</strong></p> <p>Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.</p> <p>We’re one week closer to Halloween, and it’s time to learn about a mysterious, deadly animal from Ireland called the Dobhar-chú (pronounced do-war-coo). Appropriately enough, our story starts in a graveyard.</p> <p>Conwall Cemetery is in the town of Drummans, near the valley of Glenade. In the cemetery is a sandstone grave marker lying flat on the ground. It’s about 4 ½ feet wide and nearly two feet high, or 1.37 by .6 meters, and is dated September 24, 1722. The name on the stone is Grace Con, wife of Ter MacLoghlin. But the main part of the stone is made up of a carving of an animal.</p> <p>I’ll put a picture of the carving in the show notes. It’s not very clear, but basically, it looks like a heavy-bodied dog with limbs folded beneath it as though it’s crouching. It has a long tail although that has mostly worn off. Its head is small, with tiny ears, and its neck is folded back so that its head lies along its back. A hand holds the hilt of a sword that is plunged into the animal’s neck, with the tip of the sword just visible below the belly.</p> <p>There are various stories and poems about what happened to Grace Con, or Grace Connolly, but they’re all basically the same. Incidentally, it was Gaelic custom for women to retain their maiden names, which is why Grace’s last name doesn’t match her husband’s.</p> <p>One morning Grace went down to the lake either to wash or to do laundry, reports differ. When she didn’t return home, her husband Terence McGloughlan went to find her. But when he reached the lake, he found his wife’s body–with a monstrous animal, the dobhar-chú, feeding on it. Terence killed the beast, but as it died it gave a piercing whistle or squeal. The squeal was answered by another animal from the lake, which surfaced and charged Terence.</p> <p>He fled home just ahead of the monster, leaped on his horse, and galloped away with the monster pursuing. Eventually his horse tired, so Terence dismounted and turned the horse sideways across the road to act as a sort of shield. When the dobhar-chú ducked to run beneath the horse’s belly, Terence stabbed it through the heart.</p>
