INDEPENDENT CITY OF MONTREAL, Sept. 17—In the region formerly known as the People’s Neo-Soviet Federation of the Alaskan Territories, a gigantic amphibious rodent, the first and last of its kind, died friendless in the radioactive crude oil marshes, a patch of thirty hectares just below the arctic circle known by the surrounding inhabitants as “That God Damned Place.”

The carcass was found by local scavenger Hank Williams, who reported the find to the Tymes by ham radio. Weighing three-hundred and twelve pounds, and measuring six-feet eleven-inches from extended forked tongue to vestigial dorsal trunk, the creature is one of the most astonishing of nature’s cruel jokes described this year.

“I ate most of it,” says Hank. “Tasted like shit.”