A bit of a diversion here as fellow Nessie fan, Bill, sent me this image of some old collectors' cards from the 1930s. They feature another up and coming star of that era, Mickey Mouse, deciding to respond to a poster offering one million for the capture of the monster of Loch Ness. The cards are I believe from Italy and so I presume that means one million lira as opposed to one million dollars. Given Italy's torrid history with inflation, one might have thought a million lira wouldn't buy a gelato, but this was the 1930s, so maybe a pile of lira back then would see a mouse set for life.
Now before anyone makes any smart remarks, this story features one fictional animal, not two, and it is the rodent. Mind you, the representation of the Loch Ness Monster in this little story is certainly fanciful. But Mickey bids his beloved Minnie Mouse farewell thinking of bags of cash. As we know, Nessie hunting is a male dominated field, that is because no female like Minnie is daft enough to tag along with this crazy macho venture (just ask my wife).
Mickey arrives at the loch and realizes this is going to be more difficult that he thought (my Italian is a little hazy so I may be improvising here). Maybe he should have packed a few bottles of whisky, as we often do, to help him see through the peaty waters a bit better. Now I have seen a few mickey mouse hunters in my time, but our Mickey has a stroke of genius here and concludes that tossing a radio into the loch, playing something irksome like Barry Manilow or Des O'Connor, will drive the monster mad and to the surface.
Why didn't we think of that? I guess because we don't have rodent sized brains, but I rather suspect Mickey must have asked ChatGPT for some monster hunting tips. I don't know who was the 1930s Italian version of Barry Manilow, but this madcap scheme works and Nessie duly rises raging from the depths. Did Mickey have a plan to soothe the monster if it went for him? Maybe that Italian classic, Nessie Dorma would have done the trick?
That said, Mickey moves in but he still has to capture the damn thing with his fishing rod. Another bit of lateral thinking ensues as he attaches not fish, nor a lump of mutton but a cabbage as bait to the line. Genius again! Here we are today faffing about with prawns and salmon when a savoy cabbage from Tesco was the way ahead. I am learning a lot from this series of cards. The cabbage is like catnip to a cat and Nessie goes wild. A few expert swings of the line and Mickey gets Nessie tangled up in knots and helpless. Job done.
Mickey then stuffs something red that looks like a horse's nose bag into Nessie's face and leads her like a dog on a leash back to Italy. We are not told how Mickey got this excessively large luggage through Italian customs, but Mussolini must have been delighted to find something more monstrous than himself. Mickey is now minted but we don't see the epilogue where the money goes to his head and he becomes an inebriated loser who lost it all betting that he would become bigger than Clark Gable.
Serves him right for stealing our monster and with that we end our little tale.
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