Today I decided to tackle my half of our master bedroom closet. To clean it, I mean. After forty five minutes of hucking, wiping, chucking, dumping, and dusting, I think I’m finally done. In the process of cleaning, however, I stumbled upon a monster. Or at least a picture of one.

Probably a decade ago I was co-leading a mission trip to Reynosa, Mexico with our youth group. One day we ventured down to a rocky beach along the highway to chill out and explore. Which is when I found it—a skull that didn’t look like anything I had ever seen before. It was mostly hollowed out, covered with a fishy/reptilian kind of skin and sporting a mouthful of the weirdest set of teeth I’d ever seen: definitely mammal of some kind. It was bizarre: Everything about the skull and skin screamed fish or reptile, but the teeth…

Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to snap a photo. Here it is, untouched. Next are a bunch of pictures of other marine animals so you can see how unique this baby really is. The first picture is mine, the second, a sea otter, the third, a seal, followed by another seal and a few species of sea lions. Nothing remotely similar, as you can see. In my last photo, I’ve blown things up so you can see it up close.

Note the extreme angle of the upper teeth, buck teeth to extreme. Note how only the front four teeth are large, and the teeth along the side of the mouth are tiny. Notice how there is one large tooth in the rear of the mouth facing forward. Not only that, but the bone structure is just bizarre. And notice the scaly pattern of flesh near the bottom.

Creepy? I thought so. I realize this has nothing to do with my regular posts, but hey—you never know what’s going to happen when you clean out your closet.

And if anyone out there has any clue what this thing might be, please feel free to enlighten me.

🙂