One of the earliest posts on this blog was an entry about the "Peel Street Monster" that I'd read about in the magazine, Fortean Times.
At the time that it had been published, the internet was still in its infancy-ish stage. Information continues from humankind's collective history; things like old newspapers, newsletters and various periodicals are making their way online more and more quickly adding more information to stories we're already aware of.
One such story is that of the "Peel Street Monster" that I wrote about in one of the first posts on this blog back in 2009.
Since that time, the "Peel Street Monster" has also become known as the "Wolverhampton Monster". More information about the incidents surrounding the story have shown up in additional sources and a clearer picture of what actually took place from the moment the "monster" first attacked to its death at the hands of a teenager with a brick to the misunderstanding that it was allegedly attacking a baby (it wasn't) to being dumped in a gutter to discovering it was a female to discovering there was another coati as well that was never caught (which makes me wonder if that coati had anything to do with reports not long later of a troupe of coati a few miles from this story's location).
Author Thomas Fair has written a fantastic short article about this little moment in history...
A moment when one of the most interesting animals in the world became a monster...
And, like a lot of alleged monsters and misunderstood characters throughout human history?
Repeated a lesson that continues to haunt us...
Our primitive fear of what we don't understand.
A fear that, more often than not, has time and time again brought about violence against the innocent.
Like an innocent litle coatimund a long time ago whose only crime was being curious and unusual.
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