St. Remedius Medical College: "The Celebrated Crawfish-Crunching Cryptid From Carl's Corner"
When the water monsters become a bit TOO friendly
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
One of the many subjects of study at St. Remedius Medical College involved cryptozoology (and occasionally cryptobotany, particularly involving locating the seemingly mythical tree known as the “Pink Bunkadoo”), emphasizing a decidedly skeptical bent. Some investigations of large otherwise unknown animals led to spectacular successes, such as the worldwide popularity of miniature and teacup hodags; others, such as the monster of Lake La Metrie, led to more questions than answers. No St. Remedius cryptid study, though, led to as much publicity as the formal paper describing Carlie, the crawfish-crunching cryptid from Carl’s Corner.
The founder of the town of Carl’s Corner, Texas, one Carl Cornelius, already had a reputation for putting his town in the news, whether it was music festivals or rescued nightclub frogs, but even he was stunned to look out over a new lake one Sunday morning. What was known immediately was that it was perfectly circular, full of fresh water, and resting approximately three meters below the surrounding limestone that made up Carl’s Corner bedrock. Even better, it was already loaded with fish, many of which could be seen jumping in the early spring daylight. Some witnesses just stopped and stared at the vision of that perfect lake. Some loaded up their phones with shots for Instagram, where they drew the interest of news outlets and anomaly enthusiasts. Others ran immediately for bass boats in order to explore. Some had the presence of mind to contact local authorities, which led up the chain to a call to St. Remedius, and a research team was dispatched immediately to investigate the situation.
Said investigation took approximately one month, with so, so many questions. What was confirmed was that the new lake was exactly five kilometers in diameter, with not just fresh water but fresh water with a mineral and organic solid content unlike that of any lake or reservoir in Texas, with a clarity and transparency completely unknown to those used to the cold-coffee muddy opaqueness of other reservoirs within the state. Investigation of the “shore” confirmed that the interface between Texas prairie and the lake was a strangely stable connection to a previously unmapped quantum pocket, with the connection preventing interaction with and erosion of the local rock. Initial surveys showed that the depths reached from the surface ranged from a relatively shallow 10 meters to a truly jaw-dropping 150 meters, and remote submersibles mapped an absolute warren of flooded caves spreading out from the lake’s connection. The bottom substrate was silicate sand mixed with powdered basalt, unlike anything found on a lake bottom in Texas within the last 80 million years, with the caves composed of severely eroded diorite.
And the fish! Cladistic comparisons found tentative associations between the fish of what was now called “Lake Cornelius” and fossils from before the Pliocene Epoch, but punctuated equilibrium produced a subsequent diversification otherwise only seen in Lake Tanganyika. Grazers, predators, a few filter-feeders, and even burrowers, some with coloration and form never seen by humans in North America. As is the tradition in Texas, any body of water found itself surrounded by fishing poles in short order and Lake Cornelius was no exception, with both hobbyists and tournament fishers constantly amazed at what they brought in. If nothing else, with proper management, Lake Cornelius could be a worldwide destination for sports fishing…if the quantum bubble didn’t collapse or invert.
The one thing, though, that made Lake Cornelius a major tourist attraction was also a hint as to major problems. That one thing happened every new moon in spring, with wave after wave of crayfish climbing out of the lake in the tens of thousands. Later analysis found them much more closely related to the common yabby of Australia than any North American indigenous or introduced crayfish, with most reaching as much as 30 centimeters from nose to tip of tail. Not only were these compared to lobsters, but as is also the tradition in Texas, no new life form can last for a day before someone tries a taste. Upon the first big wave spreading to the rest of Carl’s Corner, some enterprising soul heated up a pot of water, added a bottle of crab boil, and dropped a few in. When everyone realized that the crayfish were an annoyance but not actively aggressive, that individual came back to the pot, cracked open a crustacean, and discovered a taste sensation. The Lake Cornelius crayfish made the best Maine lobster taste like old shoes and despair, and when word got out, everyone in town filled every container they could find with squirming crayfish. The next month, on the next moon, the locals were ready, and “authentic Lake Cornelius crawfish” booths popped up on both sides of Interstate Highway I-35 that served fresh yabbies to travelers passing between Dallas and Austin. When word got out, the hype went into full gear, including efforts to domesticate them in great yabby farms and attempts to get them to breed outside of the lake. The efforts to make Lake Cornelius crawfish the next great culinary sensation were well underway when the first sightings happened.
Even in a place of miracles such as Lake Cornelius, almost nobody believed the few who said they saw a monster in the lake, right about dawn. Occasionally, a few would swear to seeing a long neck with a small head at the end emerging from the center of the lake, others saw lines of humps near the far shore, and others would swear they saw something huge passing under their fishing boats. Occasionally parked boats on the edge of the lake were tipped over or items inside scattered, but those were blamed on the constant south winds in spring. By summer, the incidents stopped along with the crayfish runs, and researchers, tourists, and fisherfolk alike forgot about the initial reports. Then the news feeds were full of video from motorists on I-35, stopped in the early morning by a giant long-necked and flippered beast carrying what looked like “a sheep or something” in its jaws that galumphed across the highway and disappeared into the lake. Apparently Lake Cornelius had a monster, but of what kind nobody could ascertain.
Video of a 10-meter monster blocking traffic didn’t stop the organizers of the First Annual Carl’s Corner Crawfish Boil, a three-day food and fun extravaganza planned for the end of April. A month of cameras, both automatic and carried by hopeful monster-hunters, with tranquilizers and thumbs on the ready in case anything emerged, found nothing, and town officials gave a tentative nod to the Boil continuing as scheduled. The day of the Boil’s start, the south side of the lake was surrounded with vendor tents, musician stages, and waves of parking lots, with an estimated 10,000 people from all over the United States for the festivities.
What was learned later was that the arrivals in the quantum pocket alongside the ancestors of the current Lake Cornelius fish included the ancestors of the crayfish, several species of tiger salamander, and at least one family of otters, probably related to the giant river otter of South America. The otters took over the few areas in the pocket above the water table and rapidly became top predators, rapidly diversifying as the fish did, including evolving into fully aquatic forms. The largest one was a homologue to the long-extinct plesiosaurs of Earth’s oceans and lakes during the Mesozoic Era, with long necks and limbs adapted into flippers, which fed on the waves of crayfish heading toward land during their breeding season, whether in or outside of the pocket. What St. Remedius investigators discovered much later was that while the live crawfish were a favorite prey item, nothing drove them to heights of hunger like fresh-boiled crayfish.
The end result was what anyone could expect. 15-meter long-necked flippered otters dashing out of the lake to bellyflop on the shores, eagerly lumbering toward the intoxicating scent of cooked crayfish. The main injuries were mostly caused by human panic: the only human injury by an otter came from an individual who locked himself in a chemical toilet that the otters batted about as a toy before losing interest. Anyone who moved out of the path to the crayfish found that the otters had almost no interest in them, and the Crawfish Boil was cancelled due to a rapid lack of crayfish to serve to the human attendees. Once the last scrap was cleared out of the cooking areas, the otters returned to the lake, followed by a herd of amateur and professional videographers determined to prove that at least one lake monster in North America was real.
Today, the Crawfish Boil continues, in a modified form. The tents and stages are a safe distance from the lake edge, with vendors doing brisk business in “Carlie” T-shirts and toys, and the Boil organizers gather plenty of crayfish for both humans and otters. Because of the occasional female climbing out for a safe place to give birth, I-35 has automatic gates to stop traffic when females carrying their kits in their mouths (the original “sheep or something” seen with one of the first sightings) need to return to the lake. The Boil itself brings on about twenty giant otters at a time, with a ceremonial loading of a boat with cooked crayfish then pushed toward the middle of the lake to keep the otters occupied while the people feed. The rest of the year, access to Lake Cornelius is carefully monitored by both fish and game wardens and exonormal investigation groups filling in for the massive void left by St. Remedius, and the extant population of Pteronura carlscornerensis remains stable to this day. Every once in a great while, one group or another makes plans for a live capture to introduce the giant otters to captivity or to new environments: as anyone familiar with otters will tell them, the otters have other ideas.
Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. And feel free to pass on word far and wide: the more, the merrier.