MICRO-MERMAID #MICROMERMAID In 1997, a 15-year old girl reported an encountered with a miniature, multi-armed, ichthyo-humanoid near Makati City in the Philippine Islands. The only known report of this odd mer-creature comes to us from a girl who identified herself only as “Sophie.” According to her report to American Monsters, every Sunday she and her family would travel to Fort Bonifacio in Makati City — one of the 16 cities that make up Metro Manila — in order to go fishing and catch insects at a nearby shallow creek. Sophie explained that her uncle had taught her how to catch fish. His method entailed placing a net between a two rocks and allowing the current to force the small fish into the mesh, after which he would pour the net’s contents into a clear plastic bag to see what he had trapped. In was during one such expedition that Sophie would see something that she would never forget. After the teen had trapped a net full of wriggling fish, she proceeded to fill her bag as her uncle had taught her. As she inspected the contents, Sophie claimed to have seen an aquatic animal quite unlike any she had ever laid eyes on. Here, in her own words, is what she saw: “…A WEIRD LOOKING FISH MOVING IN AN UPWARD POSITION AWAY FROM THE [OTHER] FISH.  AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS A NEWT OR A SALAMANDER OR JUST MY IMAGINATION BECAUSE IT WAS ONLY HALF AN INCH SIZE. IT WAS TRANSPARENT IN COLOR, ALMOST SEE THROUGH.” Fascinated by her bizarre discovery, Sophie did her best to scrutinize her newly acquired, partially transparent quarry. Upon closer inspection she dismissed her initial assumption that her net had captured nothing more than an ordinary amphibian and began to realized that what she was staring at was definitely a creature of unknown origins: “AS I LOOKED FOR IT AGAIN I WAS AMAZED… LOOKING CLOSELY AT IT, HIS FACE WAS ELONGATED LIKE AN ALIEN, WITH WHITE, BIG EYES, SMALL NOSTRILS, BUT WITHOUT THE PHYSICAL FORM OF A HUMAN NOSE. ITS MOUTH HAD SMALL SHARP TEETH.”