Up in the attic of the Crowleytown Schoolhouse (with a name like "Crowleytown," how can anything good possibly happen?) in Mullica Township, NJ, Doug Laubert was running some TV cable. He punched a hole in a wall panel, and rather than finding dust and insulation, he found a horrible mummy-like little monster.

"The general consensus is that maybe it's a deformed flying squirrel," Laubert told the Press of Atlantic City. "Maybe it's a salamander - but it has hair! Maybe it's a chipmunk - but it has a fish tail! When I first saw it, I thought it was a mudskipper - but it has teeth!"

Equally useless at taxonomy was Press of Atlantic City nature columnist Kevin Post, who also thought the little bugger could be a dried up mudpuppy, except for the hair and teeth. Others have suggested that the beast is a bat, a rodent, or even the semi-mythical Fiji Mermaid.

Because he's apparently that kind of guy, Laubert plans to keep the thing in his collection. And yeah, he has a collection: Laubert says the monster, which his family has named "Spawn of the Jersey Devil" and "Herman the Vermin," will take up residence next to Sammy, a dead cat with a glass eye.

It's also worth noting that such a repulsive beast can break down even the most vaunted ideal of objectivity of the press, something that we at Monster-Watch don't much aspire to: in his article, reporter Steven Lemongello, who first broke the story, refers to the creature as "that mysterious crypto-creature," "the freakish mummy-thing," "the tiny gremlin-corpse," "the ungodly fish-being," and "the unholy demon creature." Sadly, he never used the phrase that first leapt to my mind: "Satan fetus."

Editor's Note: For a picture, which the Press of Atlantic City declined to be reposted here, please go to their website.