Among other things

Is there a Flathead Lake mermaid as well as a Flathead Lake monster?

Well, it sure looks like it. As an old poem goes:

A legend of the sea

Sometimes is hard to see,

But a tale of the lake

Can never be a fake.

That could have been written centuries ago by the renowned Greek philosopher Illustrious Anonymous, a protégé of the famous old Greek Spontaneous.

But it wasn’t.

The verse was penned by someone in the Polson Chamber of Commerce office.

We had a fun time conjuring up a flippant tale of a mermaid in Flathead Lake. It all started with a picture in the Flathead Courier several years ago when the cutline writer speculated whether or not the photo of strange water rings might have been made by a mermaid.

The writer commented that they were too big to have been made by Flathead Nessie, and the lake’s monster had never been known to surface by the light of a full moon.

So, an investigation was started to try to determine the origin of the water rings. Cameras were staked out at the following full moon. Along about midnight, the patient photographer murmured, “Uff da.” There she was, as lovely as in the legends of old. A mermaid, silhouetted against the lake, sitting on a setting of west shore rocks.

The camera clicker wanted to authenticate the appearance and show her as all mermaids have been depicted, with one hand combing long, flowing tresses, the other hand holding a mirror.

But the angle at which he had to take the photo prevented such a shot. So he took the camera and tripod and crept stealthily closer to the mysterious figure. Then it happened. He slipped and like that graceful bird the elephant, he ignominiously and noisily splashed down into the water.

He somehow managed to hold the camera above water and it was neither shattered nor waterlogged.

But the commotion frightened the mermaid and she spooked with a flip of her finny tail and disappeared, leaving behind those unusual rings in the water.

At the next full moon, several photographers were going to try their luck, but nature intervened with cloud cover, storms, a lunar eclipse, wind-driven waves, etc.

And the only photograph in existence was the silhouetted night time picture, until the next summer.

Imagine the surprise folks aboard the Port Polson Princess got as the ship came through the Narrows and there was Winnie the Mermaid (she’d earned a name by then) preening, combing her golden locks. Startled, she again disappeared into the water with a farewell flip of her tail.

The entire incident happened so quickly that tourists couldn’t react fast enough to snap pictures, all except my son Alan, who managed to get the picture here. And she hasn’t been seen in  Flathead  Lake since.

Where did she go? Back to the ocean where she apparently went to a fish school where intelligent dolphins taught her computer skills.

She recently sent a fishmail message saying, “I’m fine. Flathead was too bizzy, made me dizzy; now I’m just a legend of the sea, and sometimes hard to see.”