Would you believe: a furry seagoing elephant? (thought not)

What do you do with a giant blob of a carcass on the beach? The tales told around this photo (just discovered after almost 90 years) turned what was probably a decomposing whale into something like a giant seagoing furry elephant (really). Dr. Karl Shuker, who gave this shaggy dog of a story the nickname "Trunko," identifies it here. Some people writing about cryptozoology actually took seriously the claim of a single alleged eyewitness who described a giant trunked beast battling two whales just offshore, which is the kind of thing that keeps people from taking some cryptozoological writers seriously.