...remember the story that gripped the nation last summer — a stinking, hairless carcass washed up on the beach in Montauk, N.Y., part of the Hamptons vacation area.

Some speculated it was an escaped mutant from a government lab. Others thought it was an alien. A few suggested it might be a dog or raccoon.

Now one man has come forward, or at least his friend has, to claim it was all the work of him and his buddies.

"I was one of those guys behind that Montauk monster thing last summer," the unnamed individual told blogger Drew Grant over lunch Wednesday.

He then related a tale of finding a dead raccoon in the sand on nearby Shelter Island in late June 2008.

Being young men on vacation, they put the animal on an inflatable child's swim duck, along with a lot of other debris. Then they set it on fire and pushed it out to sea.

"This creature was honored with a Viking funeral, not merely exploited for crass entertainment," the anonymous raccoon undertaker insisted.


"In the interest of full disclosure," he added, "this did happen shortly after a waterboarding endurance competition, and just before a clothespins-on-your-genitals challenge."

About two weeks later, the Montauk Monster was found around the other side of Long Island's South Fork.

Drew Grant's blog, which has a not-safe-for-work name we won't repeat, provides helpful photographic evidence of said raccoon Viking funeral.

No word on any link to this year's Montauk Monster, which has not attained the same level of celebrity.