Ken Layne over at Wonkette has done some heroic digging into Plum Island, the Department of Homeland Security-run animal horror lab suspiciously close not only to Montauk, where our friend Monty washed ashore, but to a long string of terrifying outbreaks and hybrid animal attacks. We knew from the start of the Montauk Monster mystery that Plum Island was at the center of various conspiracy theories, but when one looks at the entire awful history in one blog post, one must inevitably conclude that, despite its shifty and inconsistent denials, the federal government is assembling there a fearsome monster army that, if left unchecked, will someday slaughter us while we sleep.

Plum Island studies the deadliest sorts of animal viruses, and kept spilling its stash of foot-and-mouth disease for decades until it finally contaminated a neighboring farm in 1978 (it only admitted this recently). Whoops. But also the lab maybe invented Lyme disease, possibly with captured Nazi scientists, which is why the virus first showed up in 1975 in Lyme, Connecticut right across the water.

Also, remember how West Nile Virus suddenly entered North America in 1999 via areas immediately surrounding Plum Island? Yeah.

In 1999, the lab really wanted permission to mess around with human-compatible diseases. So it had Judy Miller write one of her "OMG we're all going to die from scary clouds if we don't do this thing" articles in the Times. But no one wanted to perish in an anthrax mist created by incompetent government scientists so instead the lab gave up.

And perhaps decided to specialize in weaponizable mutants!

Think about it: First the Dover Demon was spotted within 150 miles of the lab in the late 1970s. Then, the Department of Homeland Security privatized the island's guards, making monster "escapes" even easier. In 2006, a stronger, faster, more furry hybrid made it all the way to Maine, where it feasted voraciously on pets until hit by a car and photographed by AP. Now the Montauk Monster has washed ashore close to the island, and the lab can't get its story straight, except to say they had nothing to do with it. But really, if you're building a secret evil monster army, and just lost one of your experimental "marines," what else are you going to say?

Hollywood already knows all this, which is why an effects studio has already started mocking up replicas of the Montauk creatures for the inevitable Oliver Stone expose:

(You can buy this on eBay, by the way.)

Read the blog post (below) that will convince you to finally purchase a large shotgun. Or maybe you'd rather die??

[Wonkette]