For many years, countless people have reported seeing an animal in Okanagan Lake, one which is not known to science. In fact, the scientific community continues to dismiss these accounts. As many of the people who have reported such sightings are solid, respectable, hard working common people, such a dismissal is nothing less than offensive.
A friend of mine lives beside Okanagan Lake, and has seen this animal, on several occasions. As he is an artist, he has composed a drawing of the animal. It is clearly long and slender, and matches the description of basilosaurus, a whale which, according to the scientists, went extinct thirty million years ago. He also reports that people have seen sprays of water, rising from the surface of the lake. This I should have expected, as that is characteristic of whales. The remainder of his report came as a complete shock, or a ”bombshell”, as I refer to it. He informs me that there are scuba divers who have reported seeing ”tracks on the bottom of the lake”!
The implication is that this animal, this whale, still has legs! True, all whales had legs, fifty million years ago, during the time they walked on land. Then, as these mammals took to the water, over a period of many millions of years, they gradually lost their legs, as they had no use for them. Biologists refer to this as a ”natural result of evolution”. So how is it that this whale could still have legs?
This calls for an explanation, as no doubt most readers are skeptical, properly so. We can start by facing the fact that within any social network, friends, or ”buddies”, do not lie to each other. They may lie to outsiders, but not to each other. These scuba divers are members of the same social circle as my friend. For that reason, I believe they actually saw those tracks. Yet it is doubtful that they are aware of the implications.
There are times when common people stumble upon something which has wide ranging implications, yet fail to recognize this. They may just think of it as a curiosity, a subject of conversation. I suspect this is one of those times. The tracks, which the scuba divers saw, are something more than a curiosity.
As an example, many years ago, one of my friends stumbled upon a huge egg. As he described it, ”as big as an ostrich egg, and it had a thick skin”. He lost track of it, as he thought it to be of no importance. He had no way of knowing that it was the egg of a pterosaur, an animal which is thought to have gone extinct many millions of years ago, and as such, was a ”million dollar egg”. One of his relatives broke it open, because he ”wanted to see what was inside it”. Of course, all eggs contain embryos, and this egg was no exception. It contained an embryo. Imagine that! So much for the million dollar egg!
A similar situation was also brought to my attention. In that case, a great many people saw tracks in fresh fallen snow. These tracks were quite distinctive, very large, slender and widely spaced. No one recognized them. From their description, it is clear that they were the tracks of a pterosaur. I say this because we know precisely the shape of pterosaur tracks. The scientists have stumbled upon the fossilized trackways of pterosaurs, so that leaves no room for any misunderstanding. No other animal leaves tracks even remotely resembling those tracks! Yet the people who stumbled upon those tracks were of course unaware of this.
This is to say that I believe the reports of the scuba divers, especially as it helps to explain a few things. For some time now, I have been wondering how a fresh water lake, even a very large one, could support a population of very large predators. True, reptiles require far less nourishment, pound for pound, than mammals, but then reptiles tend to prey upon humans, at every opportunity. As there have been no reports, of which I am aware, of ”ogopogo” attacking people, then it must not be a reptile. It stands to reason that it must be a mammal. As that is the case, in order to survive, it must consume all other animals which swim in that lake, aside from humans, as well as fish.
Yet the presence of tracks suggests only one thing: this whale still has legs! As that is the case, it must still use those legs, as otherwise it would have lost them, millions of years ago. The only logical explanation is that it comes out of the water after sundown, in order to eat vegetation, to graze.
We can compare this to the hippopotamus of Africa. These animals eat meat and vegetation. They come out of the water after sundown, in order to graze on vegetation, mainly grass. That is their main source of nourishment. Apparently they cannot tolerate the heat of the sun.
It is reasonable to assume that basilosaurus has adopted the same survival mechanism. They very likely come out of the water, after sundown, and consume grass. If that is the case, the task of locating them just became much easier. It is simply a matter of finding meadows, located around the edge of the lake, which appear to have been mowed, as indeed they have. That is the grazing ground of basilosaurus.
Remarkably enough, this animal may be something more than the only whale with legs. It may also be the largest land dwelling animal in the world, even heavier than the woolly mammoth. According to the internet, they may weigh fifteen tons. That is one huge animal!
I can only hope that this information will inspire people to join in the search for ogopogo, an animal which I maintain is basilosaurus. If true, then you can take part in a major scientific breakthrough. If not true, then you can quite cheerfully point out my mistake.
It may help to think of this as part of the revolutionary motion, as that is precisely the case. Working people have to become politically active, and that includes challenging scientific theories. This is a fine place to start. Consider this to be part of training, preparation for the Dictatorship Of the Proletariat.
Gerald McIsaac Science Project 