Today I was foisted upon…
May 23, 2026
Today I was foisted upon. I don’t know how to finish that sentence to make it grammatically correct or make it make sense.
I attended the 49th annual Chicagoland Gems and Minerals Associations United We Rock show. I believe this is my third time attending this show. In case you hadn’t noticed by now, I am a nerd and find most things really cool and interesting. I know, shocking!
Yesterday I was watching an episode of Taskmaster and they were given a task of taking something boring and making it exciting. The contestant said rocks and the host responded with I like rocks; I don’t think they’re boring. To which the contestant responded with, you don’t think rocks are boring? and he responded no. To which the contestant sighed, Oh Alex sounding like she was very sad for him. Can I tell you, I was offended. Rocks are in fact NOT boring. Just because they are common doesn’t mean they are boring. Just because society has deemed them plain and boring doesn’t mean they are correct. I could and probably will go down a huge rabbit hole to prove that rocks are not boring but alas that isn’t happening today. Today is not about rocks. I did not have rocks foisted upon me. No.
Today, the Tully Monster was foisted upon me. The Tully Monster or Tullimonstrum genuinely looks like what we have been lead to believe aliens look like. While it looks like some horrible creature that was made up of our nightmares, apparently it is real. Well, was real. It was alive approximately 310 million years ago. Much to my dismay, apparently, Illinois was where they lived. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that these things are boring, but they do give me the heebie-jeebies. The tully monster can be anywhere from 3 to 15 inches long. Per wikipedia, “the creature had a mostly cigar-shaped body, with a triangular tail fin, two long stalked eyes, and a proboscis tipped with a mouth-like appendage”. Apparently no one can decide what it’s common decendents are. One of the possiblities is worms. Listening to the description, I’m thinking like super chunky leech, slug hybrid. It was also most likely a carnivore. Per the paper in the picture I took, it is “believed to grab prey with its claw-like proboscis and scrape pieces off with its tongue. Again, heebie-jeebies.
These fossils have only been found in Illinois so far, mostly in the Mezon Creek fossil beds. Apparently around the time they were alive Illinois was a mixture of muddy estuaries, rivers and lakes. Could you imagine if these were still alive?You’re enjoying a nice dip in a river or lake to cool down in the hot summer heat, you feel something skim your leg and it turned out to be one of these things? Heebie-jeebies.
So, I apologize, I had Tully Monsters foisted upon me and now I have foisted Tully Monsters onto you.